What Is Self-Awareness and Why Is It So Important?

The term “self-awareness” has become a popular term that promises to help anyone better understand themselves and other people. But the shocking discovery of research is that around 95% of people believe they are self-aware but they aren’t. When Dr. Eurich and her team actually measured self-awareness using scientific metrics across a multi-year study involving nearly 5,000 participants, they found that only 10 to 15% of people truly possessed this critical skill. Why do so many people think they are self-aware when psychologists say they really aren’t? Let me summarize what I’ve found to explain this huge gap.

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Most People Don’t Really Know What the Term Means

When asked if they are self-aware, some people, because they’re not psychologists, tend to think self-awareness is about simple things; like what mistakes they sometimes make, or what they could do better. Other people, because they’ve found ways to learn more about themselves by practicing mindfulness or journaling, think knowing what upsets them or excites them, will think it’s about knowing why they like or dislike something and are aware of habits they have. Said simply, I believe the main reason for this huge gap in imagined vs. actual self-awareness is that most people don’t know how many different dimensions psychologists include in their definition of self-awareness. And that larger definition is a good place to start talking about this complex subject. I’ll start with my list of some of the things psychologists include in their definition of self-awareness.

When talking about self-awareness, I believe that psychologists are thinking about a person’s total mindset—not just a list of desirable personality characteristics. For example, here’s what one psychologist mentioned when defining what he called “key qualities of genuinely self-aware people”:

• Present-moment attention and the ability to pause before responding

• Emotional intelligence and awareness of what’s happening in the body

• Mental clarity and the ability to read context accurately

• Genuine openness to challenging feedback

• Discernment between patterns that serve them and patterns that don’t

Notice that each of these desired qualities can be judged from two different perspectives; i.e., from the perspective of the person speaking, or from the perspective of the people listening to that speaker. When there is agreement about the speaker from both perspectives, the speaker is judged to have a high level of self-awareness. But when they don’t agree, psychologists see the speaker lacking in self-awareness. As one psychologist said: the distance between the two perspectives is the difference between who we think we are and who the other people think we are. In this distance is where most of our personal and professional relationship problems live. And psychologists have developed tools to define these differences. Probably, the most basic definition of self-awareness I’ve read is the ability to see yourself, your behavior, and your emotional reactions, objectively—as most other people around you do.

Why Don’t Non-Self-Aware People See Themselves Objectively?

We are born with a brain that does not help us see ourselves or the world around us objectively. We develop built-in mental habits, defensive ego shields, and a brain design that finds true self-reflection hard. We all develop natural blind spots that protects our feelings, but it stops us from seeing our true flaws. It seems our brains have developed in ways to help us survive and prosper but not to help us see ourselves as a scientist would. I interpret natural brain development as developing an emotional attraction us toward whatever helps us prosper and away from anything that might hurt us.

Our blind spots, the things we tend to miss seeing, have many causes: for example…

Mental Biases

• Most people think they are kinder or smarter than others.

• We easily see bias in other people, but we miss it in ourselves.

• We look for facts that prove we are right and ignore the rest

Emotional Defenses

• The brain hides harsh truths to keep us from feeling bad or anxious.

• It feels safer to blame outside forces than to accept our own mistakes

• Fear of shame makes the mind block out hard feedback.

As a result of these and other bad habits and biases, self-reflection takes real mental effort that many people never learn to do. The most dangerous blind spots are always those we are not aware of.

Self-Awareness Also Needs a Body Connection

Self-awareness is a mindset. But there are some people who have self-awareness but cannot change their bad habits or biases. The reason, according to psychologists, is a brain and body disconnect. Their self-awareness cognition lives in their thinking brain, but their deep-seated habits lie in the emotional and survival systems. Knowing a logical flaw does not automatically rewire the nervous system. Other behavioral tools are needed to change a bad habit.

Treating this type of disconnect requires professional medical help because other problems may be the cause, such as ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder).

How You Can Build Your Self-Awareness

Here are four action steps recommended by one psychologist that make sense to me:

Step 1: Develop Your Inner Observer

Start practicing the art of stepping back in the middle of intense situations. In the heat of a difficult conversation or a moment of frustration, ask yourself: “What am I feeling right now?” and “Is this actually about this situation, or is it touching something older in me?”

Research in therapeutic psychology suggests that a significant proportion of our emotional reactions in the present are actually triggered by earlier unresolved experiences, not the current situation itself. This is a core principle in trauma-informed approaches to therapy and coaching. Learning to notice that distinction is one of the most powerful things you can do for your relationships and your own inner peace.

Step 2: Actively Seek External Perspectives

Use tools like 360-degree feedback assessments and personality tests, but don’t stop there. The real value isn’t in the assessment itself. It’s in sitting with the gap between how you see yourself and how others experience you, and getting genuinely curious about what’s driving it.

If formal 360 feedback isn’t available to you right now, even asking two or three trusted people “How do I come across when I’m under pressure?” can be illuminating.

Step 3: Compare Yourself to Yesterday’s Version of You

One of the most self-defeating habits we have is measuring ourselves against other people. Self-awareness grows when you compare yourself to who you were last month, last year, five years ago. Regular journaling about both achievements and areas for growth helps calibrate your self-perception and builds a more accurate internal narrative over time.

Step 4: Get Curious Instead of Defensive

When feedback lands and your instinct is to explain or defend, try this instead. Pause. Then ask: “That’s interesting. Can you help me understand what you experienced?”

That single question shifts you from threat response into learning mode. It also signals to the other person that you’re genuinely open, which makes them far more likely to be honest with you next time.

Why You Should Build Your Self-Awareness

The Bottom Line: Self-Awareness Is a Competitive Advantage. It’s the foundation for everything else. It shapes your leadership effectiveness, your relationship quality, your career trajectory, and your sense of personal fulfilment. The good news is that self-awareness is genuinely developable. It requires courage to face uncomfortable truths about yourself. But the payoff is significant: better relationships, clearer communication, less stress, and the ability to actually create the impact you intend to create rather than the one you don’t.

P.S. A personal request to my loyal readers from Lucky Dan:

Dear Readers:

Please be patient for the next 3 weeks, while my editor (and daughter) travels to Sydney, Australia, to participate in her 7th Abbot Major Marathon. She already has earned the Six Star Abbott medal, but now there are two more to accomplish for the eight total. The next post will appear on September 11. I’m sure we all wish her the best of good luck.

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When I was a teenager, “growing up” meant when you reached the age of 18, you could buy beer legally and vote. But psychologists say that the real meaning of growing up (or gaining maturity) is not about reaching a legal age, but about what kind of person you become. Simply said, you grow up when you learn how to think and act like an “adult” instead of a “child”. You learn this over time, as a result of many different kinds of experience, input, and influences. In fact, psychologists describe this learning process as a lifelong journey, not just a single event.

Your brain changes along the way, of course, but the most important development occurs in a specific area of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, located in your forehead. That’s the area sometimes referred to as the “logical brain”—the brain area that importantly helps you make better choices and manage your emotional reactions. Your prefrontal cortex is working before you are born but it takes time for this part of your brain to fully develop. It begins to have a noticeable effect on how you think and behave around the ages of 3 to 5, but it isn’t fully developed until you reach the age of 25. And it’s not just a coincidence that that’s when car insurance companies know, based on hard statistics, that adults over 25 are more mature and, therefore, much less likely to have accidents. That, to me, is clear evidence of the welcome influence of the logical mind.

Everyone Finds Coping Mechanisms Because Life is Not Easy

Just because your prefrontal cortex is fully developed by the time you reach 25 doesn’t mean you’re able to handle all the stress, complexity, and uncertainty of life easily. That’s not realistic thinking. Instead, people adopt different kinds of habits that they think help them reduce stress. Psychologists call these responses coping mechanisms, and they divide them into two basic types: healthy and unhealthy. Have you ever looked at your own habits and asked which ones do I want to keep and which ones do I want to stop? You probably have, with some of your bad coping habits, but what did you do about them? Maybe nothing. Your ability to stop bad habits or start new good ones depends upon your ability to objectively see yourself and decide what you need to do about them to achieve a better life outcome. Said simply, what you actually do depends upon your level of maturity.

My worst bad copying habit was smoking. I smoked cigarettes for over 50 years and at my worst, smoked up to five packs a day. I wanted to quit, but couldn’t. I cringed whenever I had to take a chest x-ray. I just tried not to think about the risks. But then, as my life changed in many ways and I went into therapy, I finally had the commitment to join a quit-smoking group. It took me a year, but I finally killed the desire to smoke. How did I do that, you might ask? I think what most importantly changed for me was the self-image I most wanted. I worked with many adults my age who were self-aware, motivated, and just, said simply, more mature that I was. I saw how much their lives were working and I wanted to be like them. Maturity and good life habits can be contagious when you interact with the right people—people who already have those “grown up” capabilities.

What Does Growing Up Require You to Learn?

There is not one path to learning how to become a grown up, there are many. Each path leads to a specific goal that could be your sole focus for a period of time. You don’t have to work on many goals at the same time. I think of growing up as a lifetime journey. I’m 93, and I’m still learning more about this subject every day.

To give you a more complete picture of what growing up involves, according to psychologists, here is a list of specific mental and behavioral goals you might want to consider developing further for yourself:

• Self-Awareness: Knowing your own values, limits, and feelings.

• Taking Responsibility: Owning your choices and actions instead of blaming others.

• Emotional Regulation: Staying present during tough emotions and listening without instant defense.

• Acceptance: Tolerating your own flaws and handling loss or change with grace.

• Individuation: Stepping away from parental definition to become your own unique person.

• Self-Reliance: Gaining the practical and mental ability to look after yourself.

• Adaptability: Managing stress and adjusting when facing new or scary situations.

• Healthy Bonds: Forming supportive peer and partner connections while respecting differences.

What Makes a Person Feel Grown Up?

According to psychologists, a grown-up talks about taking responsibility for their actions, making independent decisions, and being able to care for themselves. True maturity is about the ability to act independently, guided by conscious, self-directed motivations rather than unconscious childhood impulses.

A mature person possesses a deep, honest understanding of themselves, unclouded by self-deception. They can step outside their own perspective and see themselves—and their actions—with clarity. They cultivate warm, meaningful relationships, not out of dependence, but from a genuine capacity for connection. They face setbacks and frustrations without spiraling into self-pity or excessive self-blame, and they engage with reality as it is, rather than distorting it to fit personal biases. They know what they value and priorities what truly matters. And they develop a sense of humor about life’s absurdities.

Maturity is a series of subtle transformations. Here are some of the shifts that can make you feel grown up.

1. Seeing my blind spots with sharper clarity, and acting accordingly. Recognizing the patterns in my emotional reactions: when irrationality takes over, when self-regulation is difficult, and what external factors trigger reactivity. It’s noticing how my mind distorts, denies, fixates, or forgets—and, with that awareness, becoming more strategic about when to engage in difficult conversations, when to delay decisions, and when to step away to avoid unnecessary harm.

2. Taking full ownership of my actions, regardless of circumstances. No longer outsourcing responsibility to luck, timing, or other people. Yes, context matters, but in the end, my choices are mine alone. It’s stepping into accountability: understanding that no one is coming to rescue me, that growth is a process I must take charge of.

3. Seeing my parents as human beings before seeing them as parents. Releasing the wish that they had been different, that they had met every need perfectly. Understanding that they, too, were shaped by their own wounds and limitations. This doesn’t erase the hurt, but it makes space for perspective, for something closer to compassion, and when possible, for forgiveness.

4. Abandoning the exhausting act of performance. No longer twisting myself to fit expectations, curating my identity for approval, or contorting my personality to be more palatable. It’s unlearning masks, standing firmly in my values, my preferences, and my dislikes without feeling the need to justify them.

5. Admitting, without shame, “I don’t know.” Letting go of the need to appear competent at all times. No longer equating knowledge with worth. Curiosity has replaced certainty, learning has taken precedence over performing, and gaps in understanding are no longer personal failures but invitations to grow.

6. Learning that not every emotion demands immediate action. That feelings are not orders, but information. Some require movement, others simply ask to be acknowledged. No longer reacting to every flicker of discomfort as if it’s an emergency or being ruled by disappointment, fear, or worry.

7. Being more intentional about where my energy flows. No longer spending myself entirely on obligation, expectation, or the approval of others. Learning to discern what truly deserves my time, my effort, and my presence. Choosing meaning over habit, and depth over convenience.

8. Developing tolerance for my flaws. No longer treating my imperfections as defects to be fixed or hidden. Accepting that growth is possible without self-loathing.

9. Learning to hold loss with grace. People leave, expectations dissolve, identities shift. Growing up requires the ability to receive loss without resistance and being shaped by it, and learning that grief is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be lived.

10. Gaining the ability for perspective. No longer seeing problems as singular challenges with only one solution, but recognizing that there are often many ways to approach the same issue. Behaviors and events have different explanations and that each perspective brings its own truth. Creating room for multiple answers, to entertain ambiguity without needing everything to fit neatly into a box.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Growing up is not about reaching a certain age. It’s about who you are and how you think, feel, and behave every day. Most of all, you must want to be a grown up. You won’t grow up fully until you recognize the importance of that set of skills and decide you want to be that kind of person. Once started, it’s a lifelong journey. I hope you found this helpful to finding out who you want to be and how you might become that person. I’m sure you’ll find your own life rewards as you continue to grow up.

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We all worry. It’s normal. But time spent worrying is almost never productive or helpful. And if you believe you worry too much, or too often, you probably realize you need some help from a therapist. It’s just not a comfortable or healthy way to live. The good news is there are different habits you can develop in response to worrying that reduce your misspent time and help you return to a more normal reaction pattern. That’s what this post is about. I hope you find it helpful.

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Why Is Worrying Unhealthy?

Both your body and mind pay a price when you worry too much. Here are some examples of what happens:

• Loss of Control: You cannot stop the constant “what if” thoughts from spinning in your head. You feel like you’re losing control. That’s very alarming.

• Body Tension: You feel constant muscle tightness, headaches, or a fast heartbeat. You know you don’t feel normal.

• Sleep Problems: You lie awake at night because your mind will not slow down. You lose sleep or it’s not quality rest your bopdy needs.

• Trouble Focusing: You cannot concentrate on work, school, or chats with friends.

• Avoidance: You stay away from normal daily tasks or events to escape stress. If worrying continues, the potential damage can increase.

• Wasted brain power on things that may never happen.

• Feeling tired all the time from high stress.

• Doubting your own choices and skills. In other wrods, doubting yourself.

Being a worrier hurts your life by stopping you from taking risks, slowing down your work, and causing stress. This makes you miss out on new jobs, good relationships, and fun experiences. It can make your life less successful.

When It Happens Occasionally, Here’s What You Can Do

• Write Worries Down: Put your fears on paper to look at them clearly. This often reveals how exaggerated the threat might be.

• Challenge the reality of your worrying. Is this realistic?

• Focus on Action: Turn on your logical mind with a pratical question. Ask if you can fix the problem right now. If not, let it go.

• Seek Support: Visit internet resources like the Mayo Clinic Anxiety Guide or talk to a doctor if worrying continues or gets worse. Take worrying seriously when it goes on too often.

When Worrying Gets Worse, You May Need the Help of a Therapist

I have gone through periods of severe worrying and used therapy. Today’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on the here-and-now and attempts to give you practical and immediate help I believe is productive. The more serious worrying solution may often recommend you adopt what is called “Radical Acceptance.” This is an important step you can consider even if you’re not seeing a therapist.

Radical Acceptance Explained

This solution begins by asking you what end result you most want in your life right now, after the therapist and you have agreed that the situation you are worrying about so much, is real, and you have no realistic way to change or control that outcome. The therapist will then tell you that you have no way to change that outcome and you must therefore adapt to the reality of that outcome. This might be true if you are reacting to a divorce, a loss of a loved one, or some other equally very difficult to accept outcome.

To accept life and reality as it is, you must stop fighting the facts of the present moment. Acceptance does not mean you like what happened; it means you acknowledge it is true, which stops the extra pain caused by wishing things were different.

• Look at the facts: Name out loud what is real right now without using angry or sad words.

• Relax your body: Drop your shoulders and open your hands to show your mind you will stop pushing back.

• Separate past and future: Remember you cannot change what already happened, and you do not know what comes next.

• Choose willingness: Say to yourself, “The situation is here. I will deal with it from this exact spot.”

• Manage your body: Use slow, deep breathing to calm physical stress signals that trigger the anxious brain.

You can learn more about this process through the Verywell Mind Guide to Radical Acceptance.

If you would like to see an earlier post this year that described why we have so many negative thoughts automatically coming up, you may click below.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

The human brain seems pre-programmed to imagine the worse-case-scenarios to make us aware of how bad things might get. I guess that helped us survive as a species. But we seem to worry too much too easily and need to control it. Our first reaction should always be to face and challenge our worst fears. Are they really likely? We should always be aware of how unnecessary fear or worrying takes away energy and thinking time we could put to better use. If worrying becomes problematical and is attached to an event we cannot accept, we need to know about the solution called “Radical Acceptance” of an unwanted event or situation.

I hope this is helpful and I hope it helps you enjoy much less worrying from now on.

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Are you a people pleaser? I am. People pleasing is the bad habit we learn, usually as children, of putting other people’s needs and interests ahead of our own. What shocked me recently was learning how common this problem is in the population at large. Recent studies have shown that half of all adults know they’re people pleasers. The real problem is most of these people do not realize how much damage this bad habit can do to their self-confidence and self-respect. I’m learning these facts at the advanced age of 93. That’s why I decided to make this a post subject. Maybe some of my wonderful, loyal readers or other people they care about, can be helped by this information. I certainly hope so.

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The Damage People-Pleasing Can Do to Your Self-Respect

Let’s start with the bad news. When people pleasing becomes a habit, it makes you lose hold of your values and become less aware of your own needs. You automatically react to what other people need or want as more important than what you want or need. This may not sound like a problem at first. In fact, this may sound like a character benefit; you’re being selfless. People might even praise you for your courtesy or generosity. In the beginning, particularly as a child, you may see nothing wrong with this kind of behavior. I remember as a child, I felt good about it; I felt like I was “a good boy.”

The problems begin with the constant submission of your needs and interests to those of other people—usually people with more authority or status. You begin to assume that these people always know more than you do, and deserve more attention than you do. You and your ideas and feelings begin to seem less important to you, and then to others. You can imagine how these automatic assumptions build over time to affect how you feel about yourself and how other people begin to see you and react to you. Psychologists often see the following results:

• Burnout and exhaustion: Spreading oneself too thin to accommodate others drains your physical and emotional energy.

• Built-up resentment: Suppressing personal frustrations turns into quiet anger toward the people they try to help.

• Anxiety and low self-worth: Worrying constantly about what others think erodes self-esteem and spikes daily stress.

• Loss of identity: Forgetting what makes them happy because they only focus on pleasing surrounding individuals.

In short, you are losing contact with your real self—who you really are and how you really feel.

Even worse, is the fact that other people you feel submissive to, never get to know you - the real you. They can also misinterpret your people-pleasing as deceptive manipulation or trickery. In other words, they begin to wonder if they can trust you, or they begin to see you as a child, not an adult. I recall one executive in the ad agency I was working in years ago saying he thought I was always “looking for a father”

How Does a People-Pleasing Habit Happen?

My parents, like so many parents raised in the early 20^th century, were told by psychologists that showing too much love or leniency to children tends to weaken them, especially if they are boys. I remember my father was very proud of the “obedience” his three children (myself included) displayed in public. If the children sat at the dinner table without saying a word, they were considered to be behaving properly. A popular saying at the time was, “Children should be seen and not heard.”

Societal values of that era reinforced submissive behavior, especially among women. You may remember that women didn’t vote until 1920, and women could not obtain a checking account unless it was a joint account with their husband. Religious values often reinforced submissiveness, claiming it was what God wanted. I remember my Roman Catholic neighbors, during the 1960’s, claiming that when they had pain or difficulty, they would “offer it up”. This was a way of becoming more like Jesus on the cross, they said. They made submission sound noble.

The net effect of these forces is training a child to believe that love, safety, and approval are all conditional upon their behavior. You don’t want to upset parents of adult authority figures because they might reject you, and that could leave you helpless and abandoned. That was really scary to me as a child. Adult approval becomes a matter of survival for the child. The child protects himself or herself by winning adults’ approval and pleasing them. It’s an early form of emotional learning that is hard to understand any other way, if you’re a child. Once established, it is very hard to overcome until adulthood provides knowledge and logical content to better understand it.

How Can a People-Pleaser Break This Bad Habit?

Based on my personal experience, I believe freeing yourself from this habit first of all requires accepting two basic truths:

1. You have a problem, and you must stop people pleasing so much

2. You are always a worthy adult—you’re never a totally unimportant person.

To get started, it helps to focus on defining your strengths, your accomplishments, and anything else you feel proud of. These are assets you have that are worth remembering. This is the real you.

This helps to create what psychologists call the right “mindset” to break the people-pleasing habit. But you must now commit to this task long term because you need to plan all of your people meetings better to be prepared to act and learn what works well for you. Here are my action plans in summary. You may want to develop your own plan.

Dan’s Plan

I believe breaking free from people-pleasing requires shifting from passive compliance to clear, direct, and respectful communication of your feelings. You do not have to raise your voice, or become emotional. Try to rely upon a clear and reasonable response you can offer. This is how you see the best answer or action. If you stay calm, you will sound more confident. Do not be afraid to say “no”, but have a clear and understandable reason to say no. You might summarize the simple fact that we have to agree to disagree on this. You might also consider:

• Implement a Pause: Train yourself to stop giving automatic “yes” responses. Give yourself time to consider your actual bandwidth and personal priorities.

• Start Small: Practice asserting yourself in low-stakes situations, such as asking a store clerk for help, sending food back at a restaurant, or expressing a preference for a movie.

• Communicate Your Boundaries Directly: Think out what your boundaries are for a given interaction in advance. If your boundaries are crossed, clearly define your limits and communicate them without over-apologizing or making excessive excuses. If the other person resorts to a personal attack, you don’t have to accept that kind of input and have a right to say that you think that kind of response is inappropriate. Always keep your calm.

• Reframe Your Mindset: Remember that self-care is not selfish. Setting a limit is about preserving your energy and maintaining mutual respect in a relationship. In a personal relationship, there must be a healthy balance of authority and responsibility.

• Stay focused on Your Own Goals and Feelings. Be aware of the temptation to cave and intentionally block it as an automatic response. Shift your focus to the other person and ask why does this person say or want this?

Your efforts to reduce your people pleasing habit will be a journey. You will learn a great deal along the way. Welcome it all. You’re making progress if you simply keep going.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

If you’re a people-pleaser, you can break this bad habit if you accept the need and plan to overcome it. Realize why you need to break this habit and that you can learn how to overcome it with practice and setting realistic expectations. Above all, you deserve to be your real self and be appreciated for being that person. If you feel you need help, you can seek a cognitive behavioral therapist to help you. Breaking this bad habit is a journey that usually takes time and requires persistence and patience, but it is very much worth the time and effort.

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A quick aside before the post - Hello Faithful Readers! I am finally back, and I appreciate your patience while I worked through some technical difficulties. Now, onto your regularly scheduled programming… Be sure to leave a comment at the end, with any ideas on topics you’d like to hear about next!

What do you think of your boss? If you don’t work for an organization, you may have customers you can think of as your boss. I would say that I’ve had every kind of boss you can imagine—ranging from great to God-awful. But I think I missed the opportunity either a good or bad boss gives you. These are opportunities most employees miss. That’s why I decided to write a post about that very subject. I hope you find it mind-opening and useful to your career—whatever business or career goals you might have. How can you do this?

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What Does Your Boss Do Well Vs. Not Well?

Stop imagining your boss to be your friend, your protector, or a parent to you. If you naturally develop a friendship over time, fine, let it happen. But don’t force your personal relationship needs into the workplace. Instead, think of your boss as an up-close role model you can observe and learn from, while meeting his or her expectations of you day to day. Why?

If you can learn to objectively view and analyze your boss’ performance, from what you can see and know about him or her, you’ll be learning how to evaluate all your business, as well as your personal, relationships in life; and improving your relationship skills will always make your life more successful. I guarantee it. Relationship skills help you develop better people instincts such as, whom to align with, whom to listen to, and most importantly of all - whom to trust.

Start with a simple plan to observe what you think your boss does well or doesn’t do well. I recommend writing your thoughts down—keeping a journal when you’re alone and able to focus better on these questions. You can then go further with your analysis and ask the powerful “why” question. I’ve found that asking “why” is the best way to open your logical mind and begin to discover cause-and-effect relationships you’ve seen before and can now apply to what you see. Be patient and persistent. If you want to figure people out better, don’t expect it to be explained by a rule from a psychology book. Real learning about people comes from your personal experience with them. I’m talking about really interacting with them and feeling what happens to you and to them.

What’s the Most Important Learning You Can Get from Your Boss?

Here’s the part that most business men and women don’t think about; what do I most want to learn to advance my own business skills from observing my boss—and other people I work with? Most people I know only develop a label for their career goals—goals like maybe wanting a promotion, more money, or a special assignment. But vague goals like those never address how you can improve yourself to achieve those goals. Whatever your goals might be, the real question is a much more specific one; exactly what personal skills should I try to develop to become whatever I want to become in my business world? And try to be specific. If you want to learn digital media, what kind of digital media?

Observing your boss and other people you work with, will give some idea of what skills you value most and want to develop: you will quickly discover thosr are the skills you most want to learn. I remember a moment like this for me when I was in graduate school. I was learning only advertising then, I thought, until I happened to read a Master’s Degree thesis by a friend of mine. He was writing his thesis about a marketing project. Wow! I was fascinated by what he had discovered about what types of consumers bought the products he was writing about—and why they bought them. It was like reading a Sherlock Holmes detective mystery. I immediately knew that was the kind of thinking and analysis I wanted to learn and do. I also realized it was something I seemed to have a natural instinct for. That was when I began to see my career goal as one of becoming a marketing consultant. But I didn’t know what that job was, or how to become one at the time. That took years for me to figure out.

How Do You Learn What You Most Want to Learn from Your Boss?

The best short answer to this question is: any way you can. But let’s be more specific.

If you’re lucky, your job gives you different types of tasks or questions you can address that match up with job responsibilities and, at the same tme, fit with whatever you’re beginning to believe is the right career direction for you. Don’t expect your learning opportunities are all going to be logical and obvious to you. Look for what tasks interest you the most. Trust your gut until you find more definition to your goals.

See if you can pursue what you feel is interesting to you and continue to meet your job expectations as far as your boss is concerned. Make it sound like a project you know your boss will see the value of, and will therefore be more likely to approve your taking it on. If you can find this kind of task, you can think of it as “killing two birds with one stone”—to borrow an old cliché from my early years. If there’s nothing in your current job responsibilities that lights your fire, maybe you should be thinking of looking around for a different kind of job.

Remember You’re on Your Own, But That's Not a Bad Thing

When it comes to deciding what you want from life, the basic truth is that you’re really on your own. A lot of different people will give you advice, or try to persuade you to follow them, but it’s up to you. I think of this as the most basic existential truth you have to accept. Yes, it’s a bit scary. No one wants to be completely alone. But you can adjust to it and be a stronger person if you accept it. Remember that every other human being on the planet has gone through, or is now going through, every emotional experience you’ve had or will have. You’re not really alone. You just have to find out who you are and how you want to live your life on your own terms. It’s all about learning.

The most important learning, in my opinion, is what real learning feels like. It’s not about memorizing rules, or formulas, or even knowing how to perform a task well. It’s about what you really know, and understand emotionally. It has to involve your emotional mind most of all. We’re all emotional creatures. We learn with our emotions. The video below, I hope, helps to explain what I’m talking about. I hope you’ll view it. It’s about Richard Fenyman’s method of learning. He’s a man worth listening to. He received the Nobel prize in physics in 1955 and worked on the development of the atomic bomb. To me, he has the most accurate definition of real learning I’ve ever heard in all of my 15 years of teaching writing at Rutgers University.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

I boil this post down to a few very important basic truths I’ve learned in my 93 years on this planet. Most of all, that you have to realize and accept the fact that you’re on your own in figuring out life. And life is mainly about learning about yourself and the world we were born into.

In this post, I ask you to view your boss, and other people your work with and live with, as some of your most important sources of learning. Master the art of people learning and you will be successful in whatever path you choose. And I believe pausing and thinking is a critical need for that kind of learning. I also believe that writing your thoughts down and reflecting on them is a habit you will benefit greatly from throughout life.

Finally, I would add two simple rules to maximize your learning experiences:

1. Be a good listener and observer. Keep a journal if you can.

2. Develop and answer your own questions. And always ask why.

I hope you’ll give my thoughts some consideration. I can promise you success, but only if you try.

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Why People Have Trouble Talking About Their Emotions

Most people don’t know how to identify their emotions—except by using very general words such as I feel “bad” or “frustrated”, without knowing how to be more specific. It’s not their fault if they’ve never learned more emotional vocabulary.

When I was in grade school and high school in the 1940’s and 1950’s, psychological subjects were not taught in public schools, even though other health subjects like hygiene and first aid were. And to make psychological help even less likely, I remember how inhibited adults got back then when talking about mental health professionals; you didn’t go to one unless you were mentally “sick”. There was also shame attached to admitting you even had strong feelings—especially for men—because admitting you had strong emotions made you seem “weak”. A real man controlled his emotions with his will power. This lack of acceptance of admitted emotions often resulted in a denial of emotional feelings: and parents who often thought they were helping their children when they said things like: “Don’t say you hate your brother; you don’t really hate your brother.” Without realizing it, parents who said things like that were teaching their children that they couldn’t trust their own feelings—because those feelings weren’t valid. Thank God we’ve outgrown many of those wrong ideas.

Since then, we’ve learned that we all have emotions, but sometimes we need to control our reactions to our emotions; we can’t let them control us or what we do or say. Slowly, during the last half of the 20^th century, psychology taught us we have to accept our emotions but also balance our emotional mind (centered in the working of our Amygdala) with our logical mind (centered in the workings of our prefrontal cortex). Psychologists now call these emotional mind skills “emotional intelligence”. And you can see why it is a very important subject for everyone.

What Exactly is Emotional Intelligence?

Generally, emotional intelligence (EI) is defined by psychologists as the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions effectively in yourself and with others. It drives effective communication, empathy, and conflict resolution, making it a critical asset for both personal relationships and workplace success.

But the term, emotional intelligence (EI), is not like IQ, the measurement of your intellectual ability. Your IQ level is, more or less, fixed at birth. Emotional intelligence, by contrast, can’t be defined by a single number as IQ can, and can be improved with the right training and practice. That’s good news.

The bad news about emotional intelligence is how few people in the entire world have a high level of emotional intelligence. Research from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence indicates that only about 36% of people globally possess high emotional intelligence. That means that more than 60% of all adults across the world do not have a high level of emotional intelligence. Further bad news is that studies also indicate that the lowest 10% of adults have significant difficulty identifying, understanding, and describing emotions. The people in this group have so much difficulty dealing with emotions that they are called “emotionally blind”. It’s a personality trait called Alexithymia. Clearly, there is a wide range of difference between people’s ability to recognize, understand, and manage their emotions or the emotions of other people.

Why Improve Your Emotional Intelligence?

When you consider the many areas of your life that are affected by your level of emotional intelligence you realize makes sense to improve it. It influences almost every kind of success you seek in your life. Said simply, it strongly influences how you feel about yourself and how feel about you, how they see you and react to you.

While there are many good things that can result from a high level of emotional intelligence, I have found three major benefits to be the most important to me. Here is how a psychologist might describe these benefits:

• Better overall mental well-being: Feeling it’s Okay to be honest with less stress and anxiety.

• Stronger relationships: Becoming a better listener and making others feel understood.

• Looking and feeling more like a leader: Showing calm, objective responses that others like,

Benefits like these will slowly but surely emerge and motivate you to continue improving your emotional awareness. You will enjoy moe because you will like who you are.

How Can You Begin to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence?

Given the many types of situations and relationships you will experience and learn from, begin by realizing it is not a quick fix. I think of it as a lifetime journey that never ends; you’re always learning as you and the world around you keeps changing. It can also be a happy journey of constant improvement from whatever level you’re starting at.

I recommend beginning with three assumptions:

• I want to improve my EI because it will make me happier and more successful.

• I know I can, because everybody can improve their EI if they try.

• I’m not ashamed or afraid of my emotions because they’re all normal.

There are many ways you can start building better habits that help you manage your emotions. First, you need to accurately define your emotions. Author and researcher Brene Brown has defined a comprehensive list of emotions in her book, Atlas of the Heart. I highly recommend reading to get a better understanding of all the different types of emotions you could possibly encounter. Then I would strongly suggest starting a mindfulness or meditation time to totally focus on your emotions. Find a quiet place to calmly sit and reflect for any amount of time, even 10 to 15 minutes at first, and honestly think about how you feel. The only hard rule is you must try to be honest. You might try these steps:

1. What emotions did I feel (identify a specific date event)?

2. Why? What happened? What was I thinking about?

3. Now separate feelings from facts you know. Does my reaction seem right?

As you continue to do this, you probably will begin to see patterns in your how you react to certain situations. If so, how can you summarize this pattern?

I also believe in journaling. Writing down specifically what happened, how you feel, and what you know, gives you more control over these feelings and thoughts. You begin to be more specific when you forcing yourself to use specific words. That actually helps you think more clearly too.

Don’t be too rigid about your sessions, you’re getting to know yourself better and you will probably be surprised at some of your feelings and thoughts. That’s okay. Just keep doing it.

Specific Benefits I Have Found

You can assume that you will have different needs and issues than other people. What works for you may not work for someone else. The massive complexity of the human mind and your experiences guarantee that different people will have different needs and different results in building their emotional intelligence. Some of the results I am most proud of can be summarized as follows:

I more quickly identify my feelings as “feelings”

It’s important to realize that your feelings do not describe reality—they are just your feelings. For example, years ago, when my older brother got mad at me, I just assumed he was right; I must have done something wrong. I felt ashamed, guilty, or fearful. But I now recognize and accept my emotions, if this happens, and I no longer assume the other person is automatically right. I have learned to ask “why” is the other person saying this to me now? He may or may not be right. In other words, I have learned to separate my emotions form the facts about who is right or wrong. This habit helps me to stay calm and objective.

I see other people as having many wants and needs

When someone else says something, I don’t like, I used to quickly categorize them as not smart or likeable. It’s hard to keep friends and build relationships when you do this. It’s more mature to accept differences of opinion, because that’s inevitable, and focus on what both you and they like. Accept everyone as complex, including yourself. You don’t have to talk about your disagreements, do you? Focus on what you both like or want.

I can be too dominating in a conversation—I need to listen more

Just because I know a lot about a particular subject doesn’t mean the other people I’m talking to want to learn everything I know. I’ve been a teacher and I love to teach, but they may not care about my favorite subjects. The only way to be certain you’re talking about subjects other people care about is to become a better listener.

How I can break a bad habit

I’ve saved my biggest discovery for last. It’s a victory over probably my worst bad habit—heavy cigarette smoking for almost 40 years. I’ve never found this discovery in all of my reading, maybe I just missed it. I was 55 years of age, when on December 7^th, 1988, I dumped six cartons of cigarettes down the apartment incinerator and decided to finally quit smoking. I joined a support group of smoking quitters run by Bergen County as a public health program. I had spent 40 years fighting my buried fear of getting lung cancer. I smoked up to six packs a day finally. The health group was a help. My family and friends were a help. But what kept me going went beyond the logic of stopping my smoking to avoid lung cancer. It came down to my self-identity—becoming the person I most wanted to be. I worked with many successful people my age in advertising and marketing at the time. They lived their lives so intelligently; they didn’t smoke, they exercised, they ate properly, they were clear and engaging thinkers. I wanted to be like them.

Here’s my biggest discovery:

You can’t overcome a bad emotional habit with a logical argument. You must find a stronger, positive emotional need to overcome a strong, negative emotional habit. That’s what I did. I committed to being one of the ideal people I admired so much in my consulting work. I would now say they all had a high level of emotional intelligence. And that might be the most powerful motivator I’ve ever had to improve my life. How’s that for a big reason to improve your own emotional intelligence—consider who else you might be inspiring to live better like you.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Looking back, I think better habits are what I most need to change my life for the better. That’s probably true for everybody. The real questions are how do find and adopt those better habits?

I found my answers by being lucky enough to work with people my age with high emotional intelligence. Once I saw what they could do and how they lived I wanted to be one of them. I now call the common lifestyle I’m talking about the lifestyle of being a person of high emotional intelligence. I hope you have found useful ideas and inspiration from this post.

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Have you heard about an Existential Crisis? It’s a real crisis some people experience when they’re no longer able to handle uncertainty and lack of meaning in their life—which is likely to happen after a life trauma involving loss of a relationship, a job, or the emotional support they thought they had from friends and associates. But it can be avoided, or made less likely to happen, if you begin to face the reality of life now. I hope you find this subject relevant, because anyone can experience unexpected bad luck and feel abandoned or stranded. It’s worth reading if you or someone you care about is going through a traumatic time. I hope you find this information useful if you ever need it.

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What do the terms, Existential, Existentialism, and An Existential Crisis Mean?

These terms need clarification because they’re not always correctly used. I’ll give you my basic definitions. The word “Existential” is an adjective that refers to the belief that the only thing I really know in this unclear world is that I exist. The word, “Existentialism”, (adding the suffix “ism”) is a noun that defines the doctrines or philosophy that has been built upon that belief by philosophers, such as Kierkegaard, Sarte, and Camus. This philosophy can be frightening to many people because it says you need figure out what life is all about and what you’re supposed to do or believe all by yourself. Said simply, there’s no user manual to help you live a meaningful or correct life. At its core, Existentialism revolves around these four key ideas:

• Radical Freedom: Because there is no inherent blueprint for your life, you are completely free (and condemned) to choose who you become.

• Personal Responsibility: With this total freedom comes the sole responsibility for your own actions, choices, and the consequences they bring. You’re the person responsible for what you say, do, or think.

• Authenticity: Living authentically means making choices that align with your own deeply held values, rather than just following societal expectations or religious doctrines.

• Existential Dread: The heavy, often uncomfortable realization that life has no intrinsic meaning, and can cause feelings of anxiety, isolation, or absurdity.

Existentialism tells you to think of your life a blank canvas; you are the artist responsible for painting a meaningful picture that defines your life.

An Existential Crisis Is an Intense Grappling for Purpose, Meaning, and Value to Your Life

An existential crisis is a period of intense questioning where a person grapples with the meaning, purpose, and value of their existence that is often triggered by major life transitions, trauma, or the awareness of mortality. It leaves individuals feeling disconnected, anxious, and doubtful about their identity and life choices. While uncomfortable, an existential crisis can also be a catalyst for immense personal growth and a more authentic life. In other words, it can be a wakeup call that you have to get your head on straight. That can have a positive outcome.

Psychologists say there are 4 core components of an existential crisis:

1. Death: Confronting the inevitability of your own mortality and the impermanence of life.

2. Freedom & Responsibility: The realization that you are completely free to choose your path, which brings the heavy burden of total responsibility for your choices.

3. Isolation: The understanding that, fundamentally, you are ultimately alone and must navigate your own subjective human experience.

4. Meaninglessness: Questioning whether life has an inherent, universal purpose, or if meaning is something you must completely create for yourself.

Common Triggers are sudden shifts in your world as you know it, such as job loss, divorce, or a major health scare. You feel lost or disconnected. Your daily routines and relationships suddenly seem uncertain or pointless. Your life lacks fulfillment.

You might ask, isn’t this the same thing as falling into depression? Psychologists say it’s not exactly the same thing, although the two conditions can be closely related. In an Existential Crisis you have feelings of emptiness that are tied specifically to your life transitions, feeling “stuck”, or questioning your career or values. By contrast, in a depression, your feelings of emptiness are accompanied by a complete lack of joy, exhaustion, and physical symptoms that last for weeks. It is also possible to have both conditions at the same time; a condition known as Existential Depression. If you suspect you have either one or both conditions you should definitely consult with a therapist for help.

How You Can Reduce the Risk of Having an Existential Crisis

An Existential Crisis is usually much more than an emotional shock you have to adjust to and try to repair your fears. It’s usually is a sign of psychological expansion and individuation - becomin a true individual. In other words, you’re learning more about who you are and what you can do and want to do. This also implies that the better you know yourself now, the less likely you are to be shocked by new learning about yourself.

The first question you can ask yourself now is, how well do you know your own values, biases, and needs? Studies have shown that many adults feel they are self-aware, but only 15% actually have a high level of self-awareness. The odds are you could improve your self-awareness by adopting some new habits.

The two habits most often recommended by psychologists are mindfulness and journaling.

• Mindfulness, to me, is simply adopting the habit of quiet self-reflection at regular intervals; perhaps at night before going to sleep, or when you’re alone. Spend 30 minutes twice a week, calmly thinking about what happened to you in the past few days that seemed to raise positive or negative feelings. Honestly reflect on what happened and ask why did I feel this way? You can also ask why other people reacted to you in ways that you still remember.

• Journaling is my favorite habit or reflection tool. I begin each morning recording my blood pressure and the date. I try to capture the major feelings I’ve had and ask questions that I try to answer honestly. Lately I’ve added a new subject I call “practical thinking”. I ask myself what actions and needs I should be thinking about to maintain my health and life satisfactorily.

You will discover, as I did, that the better you get to know yourself, the more you accept, like, and respect yourself. The reason, according to Carl Jung, is simple - you get in touch with all of your true feelings, and you stop fighting yourself.

Another self-help task I discovered useful was sitting down and simply listing what I call my successful accomplishments and trying to explain why I think I was successful. This can be part of your journaling or just a mindfulness session of self-reflection. I think this is helpful because our minds are programmed to think about negative thoughts easily, as part of our survival system. It helps, therefore, to remember when and why we’ve been successful in the past because it suggests what special abilities we might have. One thing these habits have taught me is that the one person I must be totally honest with all the time is myself.

I hope you found this post useful.

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Dale Carnegie ‘s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, said it in 1936 - people crave importance, and the best way to make them feel important is to listen and appreciate them. But few people know how to really listen to other people. It’s much more than just remaining quiet, and thinking about your next idea, when they speak. I call the ultimate listening, “professional listening”, because it takes a method and some planning to really do it right. What might surprise you are the benefits you can gain from professional listening—or even, just better listening that most people are capable of. Then there is another big subject we could talk about called discovering what you can learn from other people—even people you may not like—if you know how to develop your listening skills. I’ve learned that all of these listening subjects can make a big improvement in your life psychologically and physically. That’s why I decided to make this my next post. I hope you find it helpful and that it inspires you to become a better listener to win more friends and get more out of your relationships.

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What Advice Do Psychologists Offer About How To Listen Better?

When helping people become better listeners, psychologists and relationship experts suggest that it first of all requires shifting your focus from "waiting to talk" to truly understanding the speaker. The best listeners stay fully present, avoid immediate problem-solving, and use reflective techniques to make the other person feel genuinely validated and heard.

Core Listening Techniques

• Prioritize Presence: Eliminate environmental distractions, put away your phone, and make comfortable eye contact. Consciously stop planning your next response while the other person is still speaking

• Practice Reflective Listening: Condense and paraphrase what you just heard. Use phrases like, "What I hear you saying is..." or "It sounds like you feel..." This confirms your understanding and gives the speaker a chance to clarify

• Ask Open-Ended Questions: Ask questions that help the speaker explore their own thoughts, such as "How did that make you feel?" or "What happened next?" Avoid "boomerang" questions asked solely to redirect the conversation back to yourself.

• Suspend Judgment: Create a safe space by withholding criticism. You do not have to agree with everything they say, but you should accept their perspective as their valid lived experience.

• Clarify Before Fixing: Resist the immediate urge to offer solutions or "fix" the problem. Psychologists suggest simply asking, "Do you need advice right now, or do you just need to vent?"

Non-Verbal Cues

• Use Back-Channeling: Show you are engaged with small verbal cues like "uh-huh," "I see," or "tell me more," alongside encouraging non-verbal signals like nodding.

• Open Body Language: Face the speaker and orient your posture towards them. Appropriate eye contact combined with a relaxed, open posture signals warmth and genuine care.

In my opinion, all of these suggestions work well for you if you use them consistently and other people you talk to begin to expect you to act this way in conversations with them. In combination, these methods send the message that you care what they think, how they feel, and what they are doing. In short, you’re showing them you think they are important to you. Isn’t that how you want other people to react to you?

Why Do All This? What Benefits Do You Get from Being a Better Listener?

Now we come to the part that is most important to you—and the part that is rarely talked about enough; how consistently being a better listener builds and strengthens all of your important relationships. Said simply, being a better listener defines who you really are to the people you interact with and depend upon in your life.

Being a better listener deepens your relationships, builds trust, and prevents misunderstandings. It allows you to absorb knowledge, resolve conflicts easily, and makes you more approachable and likable to others. More specifically, being a better listener has the power to do the following for you:

• Deeper Connections & Trust: When you genuinely pay attention, people feel respected and valued. This rapidly builds rapport and strengthens your personal and professional relationships.

• Fewer Misunderstandings: By focusing on the exact words and underlying emotions, you avoid the miscommunication that causes unnecessary arguments and mistakes.

• Enhanced Problem Solving: Listening without immediate judgment helps others discover their own solutions while giving you the full context required to make mature, well-informed decisions.

• Increased Knowledge: You absorb new perspectives, insights, and facts far more easily when you give the speaker your full focus instead of just waiting for your turn to talk.

• Boosted Likability & Influence: People naturally gravitate toward—and collaborate better with—those who make them feel heard. Good listeners are also more respected when offering their own feedback

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Being a better listener is basically about treating the other people in your life with respect and appreciation—even if you think they disagree with you in different subjects. The most basic need of all people—including yourself—is not getting others to agree with your ideas, but rather, to consistently show them that you respect them as valued friends and acquaintances. It’s almost that simple. Two things seem important to me to always remember:

First of all, think about how those bonding feelings of respect and caring define you, who you are, to other people.

Second of all, think about how the positive, back-and-forth interactions affect your own mental and physical health. You’re actually supporting your own good health. Ask any doctor what benefits a positive environment offer versus a toxic one.

Try these ideas and see how they can improve your life.

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Growing up, I can remember how often I didn’t like myself because I wasn’t like my dad or my older brother, Bill. Dad loved football. I so wanted to earn a football letter sweater in high school—so that he could like me more. At least that was the way my immature brain connected the dots back then. I wanted to be like Bill because he had gotten into a top fraternity at Northwestern, Phi Delta Theta, and all those guys dated the best-looking girls on campus. In other words, I made the assumption that I had to be more like Dad or Bill to be respected by others. And if others don’t respect you, how can you respect yourself? In the 1950’s and 1960’s, people were often judged by their possessions too. Both Dad and Bill bought Buicks and had nice homes in the suburbs. It took me many years to learn that true self-respect doesn’t come from the awards and praise of the outside world, it comes from inside. Maybe I can help some of my wonderful readers see this truth, the one that I missed for so many years. That’s why I decided to write this post. Gaining self-respect is a lifelong journey for everyone. Maybe I can save you some time.

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What Does Being “An Individual” Mean?

The process of self-definition, according to psychologist Margaret Mahler, is like a psychological rebirth that is necessary for a healthy development. You could just call it growing up. The individual shifts from depending upon external approval to internal self-definition of who they are. Mahler believes it normally happens at birth and during adolescence but the process can be slowed by circumstances. I would guess a common problem would be a dominant authority demanding obedience from the child or teenager. Almost everyone my age experienced this problem because our parents were wrongly taught to not express love but to maintain the right behavior. Psychologists of the early 1900’s warned parents that too much love talk weakened the resolve of their children.

Apparently, some adults never completely develop their individuality. I know that I was delayed in my own self-development because I became a people-pleaser in my early adult life. It was my later realization of the damage this caused me in lost self-respect and assertiveness that I became motivated to try harder to define who I was. I can now testify to the benefits of making progress in that developmental goal. It’s well worth the effort and time needed to make that happen. Believe me.

What Are the Benefits of Improving Your Self-Definition?

Psychologists talk about three emotional benefits that I found were happening to me when I committed to becoming a more independent, and less dependent on the approval of other people:

1. Reduced Need for Approval: Poorly differentiated individuals often rely too heavily, as I did, on the approval of others, making their self-confidence fragile and susceptible to criticism. High differentiation, however, creates a stable, internal foundation that allows a person to stand firm in their own identity.

2. Balancing Autonomy and Connection: True confidence does not mean isolation; the need is to balance the drive for individuality with the need for togetherness. It means being able to hold one’s own opinions even in high-stress or conflicting situations.

3. Authenticity and Growth: When self-differentiation is strengthened, individuals report higher self-pride, assertiveness, and personal growth.

Psychologists, particularly in family systems theory, teach that without separating “self” from “other,” self-confidence remains an illusion built on external validation. Strengthening this boundary increases one’s ability to act according to their own principles, resulting in more authentic self-confidence.

How Can You Develop Your Self-Definition to Increase Your Self Respect?

Many psychologists offer proven ways to strengthen your self-respect and I can endorse any cognitive behavioral therapist (CBT) you find helpful. Below I have summarized some of the goals and thinking I, personally, have found most helpful in developing my own self-respect. I have also included some of the recommendations of Dr. Michael D. Yapko, a Clinical Psychologist who specializes in helping everyone manage their vulnerability to depression: a subject, ,not surprisingly, related to building your self-respect.

• Try to engage more with other people. Conversations with others makes you more aware of everyone’s vulnerability and if you’re an active listener, you can learn more about other people. That strengthens emotional bonds while fostering your own self-awareness. This is so important that I’m writing my next post on this very subject.

• Learn that you can’t depend upon your feelings to know what is really true. You have to go outside yourself to test reality using reliable sources. This is a very important call to look for the “real-world” and not just follow your feelings.

• Never continue ruminating (constantly rehashing your worries); focus on defining what action you can take to create new possibilities. There are no guarantees in life, but even small success builds your confidence in your ability to make things happen.

• Define action steps specifically; not globally. Overly generalized action steps are not actionable enough. Force yourself to get specific.

• Never try to relive your past. It’s not possible and you will only lose confidence to successfully manage your life.

• Remember that your mood very much influences your ability to think clearly and act intelligently. Never react immediately to your feelings. Give yourself time to think and learn, if you can.

• Realize you may be blind to your own blind spots. Everyone has more biases and bad habits than they realize. Appreciate that well-meaning other people can be very helpful in identifying what you could do better, if you just listen. Consider seeking the objective evaluations of professional therapists if you’re not sure about what you think or feel.

• You are never defined only by your wealth or your achievements. People need relationships, support, and many other potential benefits you can only get from other people.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Psychologists believe that you must shift your primary dependence for approval from other people to yourself to experience self-respect. Staying too dependent upon other people inhibits your full self-development in many ways and reduces your opportunities to successfully influence other people and achieve your goals.

The normal search for self-identity and its critical benefit of self-respect begins early in life but typically continues throughout a lifetime. Each phase of life offers new and different challenges and necessary adaptations. Each person must find his or her own path. Growing up is truly a lifetime journey.

I hope you find this post useful it and helps to motivate you to find the true you in your life.

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Whenever intelligent people attempt to evaluate the communication or behavior of other people, you often hear about the need to define or understand “context”. For example, a common defense when someone is blamed for making inappropriate comments or conclusions, is to say, “You’re taking my words out of context.” This defense makes context sound simple; maybe the critic didn’t understand a fact or two. I think all of my wonderful readers, like me, have heard someone talk about the need to understand the context. But here’s the problem. No one who brings up the subject of “context” ever tries to define it. I find that annoying. With the rapid development of neuroscience, however, there is a new discipline to defining “context” and that’s what I’d like to talk about, along with my own experience related to my problems with context, in this post. I hope you find this helpful in understanding “context”—and what it is, and why the lack of context can cause enormous problems.

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What is “Context”?

Let’s begin with a dictionary definition: the kind you might run into if you wanted to know what context was. My online dictionary says, “Context is the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.” Well, in my opinion, this definition is sort of right, except for one thing. The promise that knowing the context makes something “fully understood” is a giant overreach. They should have said “better understood”, maybe.

Neuroscientists got into the game of defining context for a simple reason. Their research consistently showed that neuro-biological context is extremely complex; the brain processes emotions differently depending on context, such as reacting to social threats versus non-social threats (e.g., fear of a person vs. a spider). In other words, there’s not one place in the brain where context is stored, it has many possible connections and associations. In studying context, neuroscientists have standardized the research process to include three basic types of contextual factors to look for when identifying the mind’s path to context:

• Personal Factors: Age, gender, personality traits (e.g., extraversion, neuroticism), and personal appraisals influence how a situation is interpreted.

• Environmental Factors: The immediate external environment, including social context and cultural expectations, plays a critical role.

• Inner Context: An individual’s internal emotional state, mental state, and history (such as personal values).

Their conclusion has been summarized as follows: Context is crucial for accurately understanding, experiencing, and regulating emotions because it provides the necessary “why” behind feelings, transforming raw, subjective responses into meaningful reactions. It shapes how facial expressions are perceived, impacts the success of emotional regulation strategies, and ensures better mental health outcomes.

Dan’s Short Definition

When you take into account all of the brain’s collected learning from all sensory sources, as well as all cognitive sources over a lifetime, you’re talking about what you might discover from the conscious mind, as well as all the influences you can’t easily identify from the unconscious mind. When combined, I call all of this “your life experiences” and it can include anything from the massively connected experience of an individual’s brain. You can also call it “the hidden context”, because much of it may not be definable or even known to the person reacting to his or her context. It’s easy to see now why people don’t immediately jump in and start trying to define context for anyone.

I don’t think you have to know the totality of anyone’s context, but you do need to recognize how important it is, and how to manage or react to your use of it or its absence.

How Your Context, or Lack of One, Can Affect Your Life Outcomes

To me, it all comes down to realizing where your life experience, or your lack of enough relevant life experience, can most dramatically impact your life. I’ll offer my own brief list and then share some of my life outcomes. The most obvious problematic life experiences are those where you begin an important mew life commitment but have little or no prior experience to manage the experience well, such as…

• Selecting a school or college.

• Getting married.

• Having children.

• Starting a new job or career.

• Buying a home.

• Planning or starting retirement.

I’m sure you can identify more of your own big life experiences that require context, but I think you get the idea of what I’m talking about. All of the above experiences require making a commitment of time, money, and emotional energy. All also assume that you think you know what you’re doing, or you wouldn’t be doing it.

So, what can go wrong? Is there a common pattern to big mistakes in these kinds of life commitments? My personal life experience tells me there is a pattern of mistake-making that leads to problems.

Examples of Problems When Missing Needed Context

The biggest problems in life, in my opinion, come from entering into an important life decision with insufficient knowledge and experience to avoid making big mistakes. I’ll offer a few examples to help clarify what I mean by not knowing what you should know, and why that can bring on failure:

• My biggest business blunder was starting an ice cream store because I had the money but no experience in that business. I imagined that any retail store owner made money and I was wrong. I discovered that I didn’t like being a retail clerk, I wanted to work behind a desk in my office, and I learned that I didn’t like making ice cream. The only thing I loved about ice cream was eating it. And one more problem - I lost money. I should have worked in somebody else’s ice cream store first, before investing my money in my own store. That’s how you learn a business, by starting at the bottom and doing the grunt work first.

• Another big mistake I made was signing up to get a college degree to be an art director without knowing what an art director’s life is really like. I hated it, and almost flunked out of college before I woke up. I should have talked to people who were art directors and spent time trying to work in an ad agency to get that kind of job context first.

• Getting married is a commitment, in which and almost half of first marriages fail. I don’t know how to prepare for a lifetime commitment to a relationship other than just getting to know people and relationships better any way you can. I was a recluse in high school, spending too much time alone drawing cartoons in my bedroom. I had a lot to learn about other people and myself.

• Retiring is a major life change for everyone and too many people fantasize that it’s like going on a permanent vacation. I saw a video yesterday that claimed that 70% of retirees who purchase an RVs (Recreation Vehicles) for retirement try to return them within 18 months. Couldn’t they have just rented one and tried it out first?

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Here’s how I would now summarize my definition of context, why it’s important, and what you can do to minimize problems with incomplete context before you start a new life experience.

My Definition of Context

It’s much more than background information, as the dictionary definition implies. It’s the totality of human experience surrounding a subject that helps us better understand what it’s all about. In other words, it’s knowing what it means and how it works. That requires understanding it logically, emotionally, and even behaviorally. As I used to tell my students at Rutgers, if you really want to learn to swim, you can watch all the videos of swimmers you want, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to get into the pool and start doing it.

Why It’s Important

If you’re familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, you know it’s the cognitive bias where people with limited knowledge or competence in a domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence. Context is really knowing and understanding instead of just thinking you understand something, because you may be familiar with the term or experiencing it in part. Said simply, it’s the difference between really knowing and imagining you know something. That makes all the difference in your outcome or use of some idea or process.

How You Can Minimize Problems with a Lack of Context

After much negative experience with my own lack of context when I needed it, I came up with two basic rules to minimize the risk of bad outcomes from a lack of context:

Dan’s Two Rules

1. Never assume you really know what your new life will be like without attempting to test your new experience out before fully committing to it, any way you can.

2. In reviewing possibilities, and testing, keep your eyes wide open and look for the realities of it—not just the pleasures you anticipate.

I hope you find this post understandable, useful, and even inspiring to jump into the pool, rather than depend on what other people tell you. Good luck with whatever context you want to learn.

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Fact #1: You Have to Accept What You Can’t Change

This is an old truth, it was even one of the original truths in the Alcoholics Anonymous program when it began in 1935. Older people, like me, find it harder to change their habits because they cling to the familiar; change may cause them to lose control and understanding. We know what we already like and want and are used to, and that’s what we keep looking for. Everyone is always more comfortable with the familiar. With all that said, everyone, including older folks, have to get used to and accept change.

With age changes, the elderly also find it harder to learn and adjust to the fast-changing world. Sometimes it feels like your body is betraying you as you get older; you feel like the same person inside, but you obviously can’t do what you used to do. And ego sometimes plays a role in not accepting what you know you can’t do anymore. In brief, you don’t feel good about it.

I tell myself constantly that I have to accept what I can’t change but my emotional mind sometimes isn’t ready to accept what my logical mind says. I have to get tough with myself when that happens. “Shut up, and accept it, Dan,” I tell myself. Be ready for your own battle with this basic truth as you age and don’t let your emotional wants betray you into doing or thinking something that isn’t going to work for you.

Fact #2: Face Your Bad Habits and Try to Change or Control Them

How self-aware are you? Psychologists define self-awareness as the ability to focus attention inward, consciously monitoring and understanding one’s own thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and values. It involves evaluating internal states against personal standards and recognizing how one’s actions, motivations, and personality are perceived by others. That sounds like a pretty good idea if you can do it, right?

The bad news is that the vast majority of people, and probably you and I, don’t have a lot of self-awareness. According to research conducted by organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich and other experts, only 10–15% of adults truly possess high self-awareness. Despite this, roughly 95% of people believe they are self-aware, creating a significant “self-awareness” gap. The bottom-line truth is, you’ll need help finding out what your bad habits are and how to deal with them.

Looking back, I realize now that the most important changes I made to my body health were giving up smoking and learning to eat better. Both were really tough, but well worth the time and effort I put into it. Mental health or stability is an even more complicated analysis—looking for bad habits and how to treat them; you probably could use the help of a therapist.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore or skip over this potential problem area. All the people who make money selling you bad habit products are not about to stop advertising and glamorizing those products and services. You have to get serious about protecting yourself and start asking questions of your doctors and healthcare authorities. It’s better to learn and start doing something now than waiting until after a serious problem forces you to talk to those health experts.

Fact #3: What You Miss Most Shows You What is Important to You

Most people don’t appreciate the good things they have until they lose them. Did you ever hear the old saying, “You don’t appreciate water until the well duns dry?” I didn’t really understand how true that was until the U.S. Army burned this truth into my memory during basic training. In the summer of 1953, my company went on a forced march across the hot, dry, and dusty plains of Kansas wearing a full field pack. We all had a full canteen of water and we gulped some whenever we felt like it. Why not? On long marches we always had a water truck come up and we could get refills any time we wanted them. But this march was different. They intentionally left the water truck back at the base. Pretty soon, after two hours, we began to get dry mouth. The need for water kept getting worse until after three long hours, we got desperate. I’ll never forget watching two soldiers push their dry canteens into some ugly mud hole trying to get a few drops of water to moisten their mouth and lips. But it didn’t work. Nothing worked. Five hours later, we marched back to base camp for the final show the army had planned for us. One soldier ran into the barracks as the rest of us stood outside at attention. Inside, the soldier began yelling and moaning. We were dumbfounded. What happened to him? Then the master sergeant stood up and gave us a lecture no one ever forgot. “Men, this is what happens when you’ve been without water for a long time and then suddenly start gulping cold water. You get really painful stomach cramps and your body collapses.” It was all a staged performance, but it worked. I can still remember those painful moans and whines. Everyone rationed their water from then on.

One of the biggest changes in life is the slow and continual loss of muscle and coordination that usually starts after you reach your performance in your mid-twenties; professional athletes can extend their peak performance until their early 40’s sometimes, but then the decline begins even for them. The question I ask is, do you realize this is happening? And do you do anything to maintain your health? If you don’t, the decline will continue and you may be surprised at what you’ve lost by the time you’ve reached your older age. I have age-related Macular Degeneration, a loss of vision, and serous hearing loss now. Could I have done something to prevent it? Yes, probably. I didn’t pay attention to those problems when I should have.

Generally speaking, what are you doing to protect your mental as well as your physical health as you age? Are you waiting for a sudden problem to pop up before you think about these things? Please don’t wait for a problem. Neuroscientists have long pointed out that most people don’t think about how much change they will experience; instead, they assume the next five years will be pretty much like the past five, even though they know there have been significant changes in the past five years.

The need is to be aware of coming, inevitable changes and begin now to modify your habits to improve your odds of living longer and healthier. That means talking to your doctors and dentists about preventative medicine and healthier habits you can begin to adopt now; maybe not all at once, but even little changes make a difference.

Fact # 4: Money is a Lot More Important than You Probably Thought It Was

I had very mixed feelings about making money when I was growing up. I wanted to be an artist and I got tired of my dad always talking about his selling stocks and bonds. We had a good life thanks to his hard work, but couldn’t we please talk about something else at the dinner table, Dad? I never actually said that, but I thought it, and religion was on my side. Mom was the organist and choir leader in our Presbyterian church and I went to Sunday School every Sunday. Didn’t Jesus say that it was harder for a rich man to get into Heaven than it was for a camel to go through the eye of a needle? I began to think making money sounded boring when we could be talking about great classical music and philosophy.

But I was lucky, Dad provided well and I had almost everything I wanted. I was going to be a famous artist and make a lot of money that way. Then I went to college. I was going to be an art director in an ad agency until two things ended that dream. A professor in the art department frankly told me, to be helpful, not cruel, that I wasn’t really good at art direction. At the same time, I tried to get a job in a small, local ad agency, and was shocked to discover how little they paid. I got a second college degree so I could become a business manager in an ad agency—a job they called Account Executive. But that was only the beginning. I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out if I should be an artist or a businessman—until I reached my retirement phase in my 90’s and finally realized, I could be both. I just had to separate my time and work better between these two different goals.

The single most important thing I learned was - you can achieve the money you need to live a comfortable life in your retirement years, if you just start a sensible investment plan soon enough. The investment plan I have used is Warren Buffett’s favorite choice—i.e., an S&P 500 index fund like one of the Vanguard funds. I’m not a financial authority. But I believe Warren is right. It works for me. Just start investing regularly, and keep doing it. The magic comes with time and the interest earning interest.

Fact #5: You Can Like and Respect Yourself More if You Just Try

While all of the above four findings are very important to me, this one is the last I discovered and I value it the most. Maybe I lacked self-confidence more than I should, but I believe that every person I’ve met, and that adds up to a lot of people now, could benefit from this truth. We all have what are called automatic thoughts that often originate in the unconscious mind and keep coming up; the problem is that the vast majority of these automatic thoughts are negative. We need to challenge them and remember all the good things we think about ourselves that come from the people who love us. For more information on this complex subject, you can review a prior post I did devoted to it:

You need to take care of yourself by remembering what you’ve done well and what you know you can do well in the future.

I hope you find this post helpful, if only to confirm what you already thought you knew.

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Human beings are very emotional creatures and sometimes this can become a serious problem. We need to balance our emotional reactions with our logical brain to solve problems and achieve a calm and orderly life. How to do that isn’t always easy, but psychologists have learned ways to help us do it. That’s what this post is about. I found this information helpful to calming me down, I hope you do too.

Human Brain Functioning is Far More Emotional Than Logical

Psychological research suggests that human decision-making, accounts for roughly 85% to 95% of decisions and behaviors, is made with the emotional brain. The logical brain, located in the frontal lobes, acts as a filter, with logic making up only about 5% to 15% of our immediate decision-making, often used to justify decisions already made emotionally. It is believed that the human logical brain functioning began about 1.8 million years ago with Homo erectus tool making, but the modern complex brain functions we associate with modern humans developed only between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Clearly, human beings possess unique brain development due to the size, complexity, and the massive interconnectivity of the human brain.

The Human Brain is Very Excitable Because It is Designed for Survival

Scientists estimate that there are over 99% of all species that have ever lived on earth are now extinct. In other words, in the more than 4 billion years of the earth’s existence, less than 1% of all life species have survived. But there’s more to be said on this subject. So far, only about 1.2 to 1.7 million species have been defined, and scientists now believe that the total number of species is probably between 10 to 100 million. This means there are more extinct life forms we have yet to discover—maybe more than 90 million more life species.

Human beings are one of the very rare life species that have survived because of our brain structure. We have a predominantly emotional brain—we are really emotional creatures with some late-developing logical brain functions. It seems we have survived because our emotional brain gives us a quick-response capability. Imagine an early humanoid stumbling into a pack of giant beasts. His emotional brain does not waste time analyzing anything—it just motivates him to run—to escape.

But now, in our modern era, our quick-action brain sometimes has too many new and different experiences that could be threatening, but our brain has the same first-reaction. We feel threatened and easily stressed. Our brain is still programmed to respond with a fight or flight response to the new or strange. The difference is we now have the opportunity to use our logical brain to analyze, think, and plan—if we learn when and how to use those added skills. We have to develop new habits to learn how and when to balance our emotional first responses with our logical mind capabilities when they’re needed. It isn’t easy. Life just becomes much more complex. Fortunately, better response habits are learnable when we experience emotional overload now.

What Common Experiences Today Can Trigger Heavy Emotional Overload?

Today, emotional overload can result from simply too much sensory input, including positive as well as negative emotions, but there are some types of emotional experiences that are likely to trigger deep, sometimes out-of-control, emotional overload; e.g.,

• Relationship Disruptions: Divorce, separation, sudden breakups, or unexpected silence/distance from a partner or friend.

• Emotional Unavailability: A partner or close friend being emotionally distant, “ghosting,” or needing space, which can feel like abandonment to those with severe anxiety.

• Past Trauma & Loss: Death of a loved one, or unresolved childhood experiences like parental neglect, rejection, or emotional abuse.

• Social Rejection & Criticism: Social shunning, disapproval, being teased, or perceived criticism, which can trigger feelings of inadequacy.

• Inconsistent Behavior: Inconsistent affection or caregiving, leading to a constant, anxious waiting for the other person to leave.

• Conflict and Poor Communication: High-conflict situations, lack of communication, or feeling that a relationship is in danger.

These heavy triggers can be particularly acute for those with already existing emotional fragility such as borderline personality disorder (BPD) or anxious attachment styles, where small daily interactions (like a friend canceling plans) can spark intense fear. The first question to ask is always how resilient a particular individual is to emotional stress. Individuals with less stability may be at risk to moving to self-damaging behavior, even suicide. It is wise to seek therapy If emotional stress seems unbearable for you or a loved one. There are even specialized therapies for emotional overload such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). All appropriate therapies basically attempt to help a person suffering from emotional overload bring their logical mind and emotional mind experiences together into a better, more calming and harmonious balance.

How Can Anyone Recognize Their Own Emotional Overload?

You may experience emotional overload without realizing it. Some of the common reactions to it may not seem unusual and easily explained away by being just physically tired, or just being in a “bad mood”. But repeated experiences of emotional overload should be recognized to be a red flag that something is wrong emotionally and needs to be addressed. Emotional Overload happens because a person’s survival instinct machinery is sounding an alarm. The amygdala perceives threats, triggering a surge of cortisol and adrenaline (fight-or-flight), which, if never turned off, causes exhaustion. With continuing stress, the body finds it hard to relax. If the stressors causing the alarm continue more problems can result. Typical reactions include the following:

• Emotional Numbness or Intense Irritability: Feeling overwhelmed, detached, or snapping at small things.

• Persistent Exhaustion: Feeling drained regardless of how much you sleep.

• Hypervigilance: Constantly waiting for something bad to happen or scanning for danger.

If any of these reactions continue it is wise to consider the possibility of emotional overload and the need for therapy to reduce the problems.

Habits You Can Develop to Reduce the Risks of Emotional Overload

Habits are the primary brain functions that direct our behavior and thinking. The good news is that we can all adopt and develop better habits to improve our life outcomes. Psychologists have long realized that the first step in building better habits is developing what is commonly called “self-awareness”. Few people have a high degree of self-awareness, however, even though they may think they have that. The basic habits experts recommend to build better life habits include the following:

Your Own First-Reaction Habits

It’s helpful to be prepared for emotional overall moments, especially the negative ones, by having a response plan to neutralize the impact and avoid overreacting. Experts list several types and I am listing the ones I believe have been most helpful to me:

• Immediately challenge the negative thought or fear; ask, is this really true?

• Ask “why” did someone say or do something that upset me?

• Get up and do something physical; walk or move your body.

• Remind yourself who you really are; e.g., I am an intelligent, caring adult.

• Remind yourself of relationship feelings you have and want to maintain.

• Immediately get involved in activity you enjoy; e.g., a hobby, a sport, etc.

Remember to make whatever works best for you, your first response habit when you experience emotional overload. Find a way to remember what you want to do first; e.g., call your choice response your “fire extinguisher” or create an acronym like “TAB time” (Take A Breath).

Your Own Mindfulness Habit

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present and engaged in the current moment without judgment. That may sound easy to do, but everyone who begins to practice it quickly learns that it really isn’t. You have to learn to stop listening and reacting to your own automatic thoughts, which are constant, and becoming more aware of your own true inner feelings. It involves paying close attention to your own thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and the true, or real, world you are living in.

As you continue to practice mindfulness, you become more aware of the richness of each moment and reduce the stress created by your mind. Research shows that mindfulness-based therapy effectively supports treatment for anxiety, depression, trauma, substance use disorders, stress disorders, and other mental health issues.

To begin your own mindfulness practice, you do not need to pay someone to show you the technique; it is not like learning how to serve a tennis ball. Experts advise doing three simple things to start:

1. Commit to a time and a quiet place to practice mindfulness. Even a few minutes a day is enough to begin.

2. Relax but keep your focus on getting in touch with yourself. Do not react to the constant automatic thoughts everyone has, just return your focus to your mindfulness practice.

3. If you wish to be more comfortable, feel free to find a better chair or space, or scratch an itch, and remember that this practice soon becomes more natural feeling with time. Keep doing it.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Life is often difficult and sometimes even almost unbearable. But you can learn ways to reduce your emotional overload. The first step is always to accept the fact that you need to do something about your emotional state if you experience any problem, including emotional overload. There are short term, first-response coping methods, and long term proven methods to help you reduce the risks often associated with extreme emotional overload. But you need to take action and to reach out for help if you need it.

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Why Think About Big Problems That Haven’t Happened Yet?

The answer is to be better prepared, and that includes planning to do things now that might be very helpful to you later—if and when you have any big problems.

People don’t want to imagine bad things happening and they often create illogical reasons for not thinking about what might happen. I’ll never forget what a friend of mine said when I suggested she try to reflect on her past experiences to see what could learn about herself; “I don’t want to think about the past because you can’t change any of it. I prefer to focus on the future.” Later, my friend and I were at a dinner together, and I was surprised by how she answered a question raised by a younger guest who asked: “Why do we have to study history in high school?” My friend immediately answered the question: “So we don’t make the same mistakes again.” What surprised me was my friend didn’t see the connection between analyzing history and analyzing her own past experience; the purpose is not to try to change the past, but to avoid making the same mistakes again in the future. She didn’t see that as the reason to reflect on her own past, probably because she was uncomfortable analyzing her own reactions.

Psychologists say that the main reason people don’t want to evaluate their past behavior is that they’re afraid of what they may discover. But what are people afraid of discovering about themselves? All humans have biases and make mistakes, don’t they? I believe we have to accept the fact that we’re flawed and make mistakes because that’s how we learn. So, don’t be surprised if you were wrong about something. You’re human. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, my friend. That’s how we all get smarter.

Let me offer my views on how we can think about preparing for what might go wrong in our three big subjects and what you might do about it now, before they actually happen.

Preparing for Health Problems

As we age, we all become more aware of the types of health problems we or loved ones might experience. Sometimes alerts come from friends instead of doctors. This was how my first daughter’s eye muscle problem was discovered. A friend noticed something wrong with our daughter’s eye movements. We got our daughter’s eye problem evaluated and resolved with an operation before it got much worse. Always pay attention to indications of possible problems and check them out.

An adult’s busy work schedule might seem like a logical excuse not to take action for a potential problem, but never let that mistake happen. Don’t wait for pain or obvious symptoms to justify taking time for a complete examination—no matter how busy you might be. I know of a case of waiting too long that resulted in a big operation that changed a person’s life; an operation that would not have been necessary if the early symptoms had been faced realistically and dealt with much earlier. Never take unnecessary chances waiting to examine or treat a possible health problem.

I’m a good example of bad behavior like this. I started smoking at age 16. It was a coping or escape mechanism for me, of course, and every time I got a chest X-ray, for years afterward I worried about what It might show. After almost 40 years of heavy smoking, up to six packs a day, believe it or not, I finally got scared enough to do something about my horrible habit. I dumped seven cartons of cigarettes down our apartment incinerator chute and went cold turkey, joining a support group run by Bergen County. It took me almost 40 years of constantly abusing my lungs to finally take action. It then took me almost a year to completely get rid of my tobacco addiction, but I’m still here today because I was able to quit. I know it’s hard to give up a bad drug habit. Any support groups or therapists you can get support from are worth the time and effort. I found it very helpful to spend time with non-smokers I admired and wanted to be like. And I remember my 40 years of lying to myself about smoking with regret now, but I’m still alive.

My two rules of healthcare now:

1. Take any indication or likelihood of risk seriously. Stop the bullshit and face it.

2. Get the best medical evaluation you can as soon as you. Get involved in saving your life or a loved one’s life.

If you’re really smart, you’ll try to get the person at risk into preventative health practices any way you can. You know what I’m talking about, appropriate exercise, appropriate eating, and getting enough sleep at minimum.

Preparing for Relationship Loss or Change

There are many degrees of suffering anyone can experience when an important relationship comes to an end or changes dramatically. The most painful loss can be caused by the death of a loved one or a sudden change like a divorce. There’s not much you can do to prepare for this extreme degree of suffering, but you can alert yourself to the likelihood of a relationship change if one is signaled by a change in behavior. All that can be said is that relationships change as people change.- Expect these changes in everyone, including yourself.

Psychologists believe that the best response to any indicated change or loss between people is honest communication without anger, attacks, or judgments. Do not assume everything is fine when communication becomes limited, or a person seems to want to share less. Instead, be on the lookout for signs of shifting feelings. Maybe one person no longer smiles or seems happy. Be on the lookout for such signals of shifting mood and always encourage communication if you’re not sure how the other person really feels.

Said simply, never take the other person for granted in any relationship you have. If you feel a change in the relationship initiate a conversation.

Preparing for Money Losses or Needs

Based on what I’ve seen, I would say that the biggest money mistake most young adults make is not thinking about starting a regular savings plan soon enough. They run up credit card debt or other forms of debt because it’s easy money to get if you’re young with a steady job. But if you start this way, you’ll find yourself sliding down a slippery slope. You’re the only one who can get yourself out of debt but it takes self-discipline, a commitment to frugal spending, and starting a regular savings plan. The brutal truth is you’ll never be able to afford major expenses like buying a nice home, putting your kids through college, or being able to retire until you’re debt free. And don’t count on Social Security to bail you out later on. Every financial analyst I’ve ever talked to warns that you can’t depend on social security being there when you’re ready to retire.

The best advice I’ve ever heard about becoming financially independent was Warren Buffett’s advice to start a regular savings plan with an S&P 500 index fund as soon as you can. It’s the cheapest entry into a credible fund and all you have to do is maintain your steady investment—even if it’s small. The magic is how much you can be worth eventually, over time, due to compound interest. It took me a long time to see this path to financial independence but I’m on this path now with very positive results.

You need your own, personally owned, money to pay for many kinds of major expenses you might have, including health problems and relationship needs. Ask yourself where would you get $5,000 right now if you really needed it? If you don’t have that kind of money, you’d have to borrow it. If you can’t borrow it, you might not be able to do whatever you wanted the money for. I think you see how you can get squeezed when you need money later.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Whatever your age is now, you need to look ahead to what might happen in your life in order to do what you can now to be prepared. The three areas I think that most people have big problems with, and you should be as prepared for as you can be, are health, relationships, and money. That’s where I suggest you spend your time thinking about how you approach the future and what you want to be thinking about. In other words, don’t wait for your life events to show you what you what can happen, be prepared by thinking about them now.

I hope you find this call to thinking good advice and it helps motivate you to do your own thinking and planning. You’re the one who must decide what and who are important to you. I hope you continue to think about what you want and will try to make happen to make your life work for you and the people you most care about.

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Who you are, or try to be, is created by two kinds of sources: (1) your internally-sourced needs and wants you can call your natural self, and (2) your externally-sourced needs and wants from parents, friends, and other people who influence you. But sometimes, these different sources are in conflict, telling you completely different things to say, think, or do. If the conflict is a minor one, you only have to remain silent and no one will ever know you have conflicting needs or wants. But if the conflict is a major one, other people will know something is wrong, because the conflict can turn you off, or cause you to act unexpectedly. What has happened is that the conflict is strong enough to confuse you, or give you mixed feelings that restrict what you do or say. Both Freud and Jung agree that people should try to understand their repressed feelings in the unconscious mind, and try to integrate them into your conscious mind to produce a more complete, whole personality. Said simply, these conflicts slow you down and inhibit you from performing at your best.

The good news is that it is possible to reduce your conflicts and present yourself as the person you feel is your “true” self, honestly and comfortably, if you follow some proven rules. I know, because I’ve made a lot of progress finding my true self and trying to honestly be that person. If you follow what I’ve learned to do, I hope you will have the same success.

Start With the Right Questions About Yourself

What I did, and what I suggest anyone interested in defining their own true self first try to do, is ask a few basic questions. Think about your personal relationships and your workplace relationships. Try to be as honest as you can:

Q1. How do you want the important other people in your life to think of you?

Q2. For those same people, how much of your true self do you show them?would you most want them to think of you? Your answers may be different from those in the first question

If you’re totally honest, you may come up with some strange answers, as I did. For example, when walking into an auditorium to hear the president of our advertising agency in New York talk about our business goals that year, I realized I wanted the people I worked with there to see me as the best Ragtime piano player in the Account Management department. Talk about out of sync wants. Shouldn’t I want the other ad agency staff to see me as a credible and clear-thinking Account Manager? I had a conflict of needs at that time.

This is how you begin to know yourself, and know the person you want to be. A self-aware person continues to think about who they are, as they continue to learn from their interactions with different kinds of people. And be ready to hear and accept what you don’t like hearing. Sometimes that kind of learning is far more important than all the praise you hope to hear about you.

After giving these questions honest thought, I suggest you make a list of adjectives that represent how you want each important person, or each important group of people, to think of you. A list I came up with for myself was Positive, Intelligent, Sensitive, and Adult. I’ve seen other lists that include, calm, considerate, responsible, friendly, and patient. Make your own list of 4 or 5 personal adjectives and tuck it away to look at a month from now. That’s your first attempt at coming up with the true self you want to project.

Do You Need Help Showing Your True Self?

Some people resist self-reflection because they’re afraid of what they might find out about themselves. For example, you might have been told you were expected to be a “perfect” child and now, if you look back on your life, you might discover you really weren’t always “perfect”. That’s a conflict between who you were told you were supposed to be and who you really know you were. If that’s you, it’s now time to learn you were a normal child and that’s okay.

People afraid to reflect on their life sometimes employ false logic to justify not doing it. I’ll never forget a friend of mine I once encouraged to try meditation and self-reflection to see herself more clearly. We were at a dinner party and she said, “No, I don’t want to waste time going over what I did in the past, I can’t change the past. I’d much rather focus on the future.” Later, at the dinner party, another guest asked a related question to mine: “Why do they make us study history in high school?” My friend, to my surprise, jumped in with a clear answer; “Because we don’t want to make the same mistakes that were made in the past.” I was amazed that my friend could see the benefit of studying world history but not the same kind of benefit from studying your own past experience. The purpose of reflecting or analyzing the past is not to change what happened; rather, it’s to learn what you can do better when you prepare for the future.

Meditation and self-reflection are about trying to learn what happened—not about fixing the past. This is a good way to better prepare yourself for the future.

Are you addicted to any coping mechanisms? I was. I smoked too many cigarettes, drank too much whiskey, and often ate too much food. I was conflicted trying to be an artist and a businessman at the same time. It took me a long time to begin to learn when I should be each type of person. A heavy use of coping mechanisms is a clear sign you’re struggling with some kind of conflicts in your life and you should do something about it. It took me a long time, but I kicked all of those bad habits and look and feel much better today as a result.

If you need help dealing with your conflicts, don’t be afraid to consider therapy. I went into traditional Freudian psychanalytic therapy in the 1970’s and it helped me see myself much better. If you feel conflicted and need more help working your way through self-discovery, consider therapy as a smart and worthwhile investment in your mental health. Today, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is commonly recommended and is readily available. I’m doing it myself right now.

How To Find Your True Self

If you have conflicts and want to better understand your “true” self, I applaud your decision. The only caveat I have to offer is don’t be discouraged by learning things about your “true” self you don’t like. That’s why you have conflicts. Think of your learning your true self as a lifelong journey. You’ll continue to change as you learn and develop different relationships. But continuing to focus on finding who you really want to be, and the personality you want to project to others, keeps getting better.

Here are some basic things you can do to learn your true self: Try them all but keep doing what works best for you:

• Practice Self-Acceptance: Embrace all aspects of yourself, including flaws and vulnerabilities, rather than trying to fit in or meet, often unrealistic, perfectionist standards. Above all, don’t be a constant people pleaser.

• Try to Uncover Core Values: Identify what truly matters to you—not what you have been told matters. Your true self is closely linked to your deepest values and passions. Don’t be afraid to look at both.

• Utilize Mindfulness and Reflection: Use meditation, journaling, or quiet contemplation to connect with your inner experience and understand the motives behind your decisions.

• Engage in Therapy: A therapist can provide a safe space to explore true feelings, untangle the “false self” from the true self, and understand past, limiting experiences.

• Spend Time Alone: Taking time away from social pressures allows you to reflect and hear your own thoughts.

• Live Transparently: Practice being your true self in your interactions, whenever you can.

What Living with Your True Self Feels Like

• You begin to feel free of conflicts living your true self. You feel more authentic. You have less need of defenses.

• You become more assertive and seem more self-confident. You’r less passive.

• You feel more ready to lead others. You don’t need to get constant confirmation from others.

• You feel and react more to your own curiosity. You learn more.

• You seem to have more energy. You feel more alive.

• You like yourself more and are less threatened by criticism.

• You’re a better listener to other people and they realize it.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

I’ve already experienced many of the above listed rewards of being your true self, but I’m continuing to keep developing my true self. Best of all, you like yourself better because other people like you more. You know you’ve got better habits that positively affect all aspects of your life. It’s worth the effort to find and continue to develop your true self. I hope you can do it.

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Abraham Wald was a man who solved a big problem for the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II by thinking outside the box. I’m now hoping that by telling his story, and trying to explain what he did, and how he did it in this post, I might be able to discover some new ways for me to solve some of my problems, and possibly even help my wonderful readers solve some of their problems by doing what is called thinking outside the box. Let’s see if telling his story does any of that.

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What Did Abraham Wald Do That Was So Unusual at the Time

Abraham Wald was a Statistician at Columbia University when WW II began. He was working in a special group called the Statistical Research Group, formed to help the American government solve unusually complex and difficult problems which required statistical thinking. The problem in which Abraham Wald did his amazing thinking outside the box was the need to add more armor to large bombers flying over Germany. The Army Air Force was losing more planes than it could replace. The Nazi fighters and anti-aircraft weapons were shooting down too many large B-17 and B-24 bombers that flew from bases in England.

The Statistical Research Group was given diagrams showing where bullets had hit the planes carefully recorded by ground crews after the planes returned. Many planes did not return, of course, because Nazi bullets had brought them down over their German targets. The Statistical Research Group was given these diagrams and asked to answer one critical question; where should the Army Air Force apply extra armor to reduce the shocking rate of plane loss? They couldn’t add more than 1,000 pounds of armor to each plane - more added weight would then jeopardize flying ability.

The Statistical Research Group studied the evidence and struggled to answer the big question for two days. Abraham Wald did not participate in the group discussions. He sat alone, just thinking. Then, on the third day, he stood up and made a startling announcement. “You’ve got the wrong sample,” he said, and the other statisticians and military officers didn’t know what to say. Abraham Wald’s thinking out of the box had led him to one conclusion: the bullet hit patterns they needed to see and study were on the planes that had been shot down, not the planes that came back. The shot down planes showed the bullet hit patterns that needed more armor. No one else thought of this solution because they did not have the bullet hit patterns on the shot down planes, but Wald used his expertise in statistics to estimate those patterns.

How Did Wald Predict the Likely Bullet Patterns on the Planes Shot Down?

This is the thinking I cannot provide in this post. I’m not a statistician and he used his advanced mathematical skills to arrive at these conclusions. I only know that his math was universally verified by academics. But I can make two analytical observations based on what I will call common sense.

1. The bullet hit patterns that brought down the other planes are probably the very ones not seen on the planes that came back.

2. The bullet hits most likely to bring down a large bomber are probably hits in the engines or in the cockpit of a plane because those are the most vulnerable locations for any plane. A plane that loses an engine or its pilot or co-pilot are assumed to have a substantially reduced likelihood of being able to fly home.

The proof of Abraham Wald’s out of the box thinking includes two kinds of impressive evidence.

1. As soon as the Army Air Force added more armor to the engines and the cockpit, the areas that Wald recommended, based on his research, the loss rate dropped significantly.

2. When downed American bombers were found, as the Germans retreated from Allied ground forces, inspections of the downed planes verified Wald’s projected bullet patterns on those planes.

How Important Was Wald’s Thinking Out of the Box?

Abraham Wald’s thinking from this event led to his full development of what is now called Survivorship Bias, a theory now commonly used in many fields extending far beyond its first use to reduce plane and crew loss for the Army Air Force in World War II. Generally speaking, Survivorship bias is a type of sample selection bias that occurs when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group. In other words, survivorship bias occurs when an individual only considers the surviving observations without considering those data points that didn't “survive” in the event. By looking at this principle more closely, you can see that it has applications far beyond military vulnerability predictions.

Key Aspects of Survivorship Bias

• Misleading Data: It creates a skewed picture where the successes are visible, but the failures are invisible or overlooked.

• Incomplete Analysis: It focuses on the "survivors" of a process, such as successful companies, living patients, or returning airplanes.

• Incorrect Conclusions: It often leads to mistaken correlations or false assumptions about what causes success.

• Business Success Stories: Studying only successful companies to determine success factors ignores the thousands of failed companies that used similar strategies.

The last aspect above brought to my mind the common belief that Napoleon Hill’s still popular 1937 book, Think and Grow Rich, offers valuable learning about how to get rich. I think the book is a classic example of people being misled by its survivorship sample bias. I came to this conclusion when I looked at the goal event as getting rich, and then defined two samples viewing each as the likely cause of that effect; the first sample being the rich men Hill interviewed and obtained his casual information from; the second sample being all the other men who thought the same way, and wanted to get rich but didn’t. Hill never considered the second sample.

Promised Effect: Becoming rich by thinking a certain way, as promised by Hill’s book title,Think and Grow Rich.

• Sample 1: The rich men that Hill interviewed to develop his thinking recommendations.

• Sample 2: All the other men who think the same way and want to be rich but didn’t.

I do not have evidence to verify my assumption but I believe that sample 2 contains far more men than sample 1, and therefore the promise of getting rich by thinking Hill’s way is not a valid conclusion. This way of thinking doesn’t work for more men than it does work for. And this conclusion further suggests that something else must be missing in the book’s cause and effect promise. The missing elements, I believe, are those claimed by critics of the book, as well as my own experience as reported in my Feb 6, 2026 post.

What Can We Learn from Wald’s Story About How to Think Out of the Box?

Use Cause-and-Effect Structures: It seems to me that Abraham Wald Was synthesizing his options into alternative cause-and-effect structures. In other words, I think he kept asking what causes what? This would turn on the logical mind, if he did, and that adds objectivity. This can be a learned habit of thinking when analyzing alternative possibilities.

Embrace the Lonely World of Independent Thinking: Resist the urge to please others and seek to find your own credible conclusions. If there was one thing Abraham Wald had to deal with throughout his life, it was a world that challenged his very existence. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family and started school just before the Nazi government took power in Germany. He was schooled at home because public schools in Romania then required attendance on Saturdays. His family were intellectuals who encouraged independent thinking, however, and he was able to get into the University of Vienna where he obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics. His published work earned him an invitation to lecture in America in 1938, and it was an invitation that saved his life, literally. Most of his family later died at Auschwitz. He was a survivor of the Holocaust.

Learn How to Learn on Your Own. From the beginning of his life, he was encouraged and often forced to think independently. I think it became his basic habit of mind. These skills are not often taught in schools in America today.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Based on my reading of his life, I think that Abraham Wald would recommend patient, objective, and honest analysis to achieve thinking out of the box. He was described to be a patient, polite, and very clear lecturer at Columbia. In fact, the notes taken by his students at his lectures reportedly were sought by students at many other universities. To me, he symbolizes the highest level of academic excellence.

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We all want to be with people who like us and agree with us, but that isn’t always possible. We all can experience disagreement and even rejection from others fairly often. Sometimes they reject one thing you say but sometimes feels like it goes deeper—and might even feel like a rejection of you, personally. What is sometimes surprising is to discover that someone you’ve known for a long time, a person you feel you know quite well, says something you find utterly ridiculous. How should you react then? I’m doing my summary of what I’ve experienced and learned to provide some help, hopefully, to any of my wonderful readers who have asked questions like these. I hope you find it useful.

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Be Prepared for Rejection or Disrespect to Happen

The best advice anyone can offer you is to be prepared and, most importantly, try to understand what is going on—with both you and the other person. If one or more other people can make you feel stupid or inferior, and you know you’re not either, you already know that something is wrong with the way this event went down. If you don’t like what happened, and you don’t want it to happen again like that, you really want to know the answer to why it happened.

But when it happens, and especially if it’s a surprise, you most of all want to know how to react. If other people are observing this happening, you realize you don’t want to look tongue-tied (unable to respond), or afraid, and you don’t want to over react and look out of control. Your first response in such situations can be thought out and learned just like how you would react to any emergency. In the 1940’s, the Charles Atlas comic strip ads captured the secret desire of every thin male on the beach, when a muscular bully kicked sand in his and his girlfriend’s faces.

The dream solution promised to thin men in these ads was the quick way to build a muscular body so that the next time the bully kicked sand you, now muscular, could knock him down. The unlikely outcome is obvious to any body builder, but the success of this ad clearly demonstrated the strength of this dream solution. It was an emotional need to overpower the offender and demonstrate your manliness to your girlfriend.

Unfortunately, life is never that simple. But the same desire to defeat an offender is a common human response. The trouble is that situations in which you might feel rejected or demeaned are far more complicated than this one. Having sorted through several different versions of this negative experience, I’d like to focus on three versions that I feel are fairly frequent and my thoughts might be most helpful in knowing how to deal with them.

Prepare a First Response for Minor Disagreements in Polite Society

Basically, the advice is to stay calm and respond confidently whenever you were rejected or demeaned by someone else—whether it was a business meeting or at a social gathering. The way to do this is to pause your immediate response and try to give yourself time to figure out why the other person behaved like that. But I think you also prepare for such surprises in advance by deciding now, in advance, how you want to feel about yourself now or later, when you reflect on this event. I call this my core identity—the kind of person I want to look, act, and feel like all the time—especially when I’m put under pressure.

You decide your core identity by thinking about it before anyone tests you. There are many things you can think about, but I suggest you try to define your core identity in simple but important values to you. You’re the one who should make this decision. You’re not trying to please anyone else. I also suggest you keep it easy to remember. My Core Identity I call PISA. I like Italian things and I was impressed by the leaning tower of Pisa when I saw it. It’s a memorable acronym for me. It stands for four qualities I seek to achieve:

PISA

1. Positive or patient (I like both)

2. Intelligent

3. Sensitive (I listen to and respect other people)

4. Adult (I am mature with emotional intelligence)

These are feelings, not logical conclusions. In other words, I want to feel, positive/patient, intelligent, sensitive, and adult. When I’m thrown under the bus by others, I immediately remember I am PISA. Their situation then defines my immediate reaction; in other words, when it happens, I ask myself; what would a PISA personality do in this situation? This has proven to be a helpful guide many times for me.

One example was when a long-time friend of mine insulted me over a political difference—an easy area to find disagreements for anyone. My friend will remain nameless, but the demeaning comment happened like this: I had just seen the 2018 comedy drama film Vice, depicting the life of Dick Cheney under George W. Bush. I knew my friend was a Republican, but I thought he would appreciate the historical facts of the film all of which, I hoped, would cause him to doubt the ethics of Dick Cheney. Here’s what happened:

Me: “I just saw the film, Vice, and really thought it explained a lot about what Dick Cheney did.”

Friend: “Dan, are you going to let Hollywood liberals do your thinking for you?”

Notice how his personal attack violated my desired core personality, PISA. He implied I wasn’t thinking for myself, which implied I wasn’t intelligent, and further implied I wasn’t mature. I was mad. But I also remembered that I valued his friendship. I could have lashed out with that response and added insults, but I didn’t. Instead, I thought about how a PISA personality would respond and tried to do that. There was nothing in what he said, to argue about. We would then just be personally attacking each other and that, clearly is not PISA.

After the First Response, Ask Yourself Why the Other Person Did That

If you’ve been hurt or you feel your public image has been damaged in some way, it’s important to reflect on what happened and ask the big “why” question; why did the other person do that? The reason this is so important is that you now need to focus on the other person’s needs rather than your own feelings. What I used to do, and many people still do, is to is to put too much faith in the validity of the other person’s demeaning remark or rejection and they immediately ask, “What did I do wrong?” This is especially likely to happen if the other person had a superior status to you, a boss, a parent, even an older brother or sister. Yes, you should also consider what you might have done to bring on this event, but it should be balanced with an objective analysis of the other person’s needs too.

Do Not Expect to Have a Successful Response to Every Bad Situation

The hardest lesson to learn is that you can’t always respond to, resolve, or mitigate even the most glaring wrongs. Even your best efforts cannot stop the worst result from happening. If that happens, and you’ve done all you can to prevent it to no avail, you simply have to accept the reality and hope that others will learn from it. There are endless examples of this when megalomaniacs wage war, even today, but one of the clearest examples I found was General James Longstreet’s failed attempt to get General Robert E. Lee to halt the infamous Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg in 1863.

In the July 3, 1863, assault known as Pickett’s Charge, Pickett’s specific division (comprising roughly 6,000 of the total 12,000–15,000 Confederate troops involved) suffered 2,655 total casualties, including roughly 498 killed outright. The entire attacking force suffered over 6,000 total casualties, with roughly 50% or more becoming casualties. Why such a catastrophic disaster? General Longstreet, the second in command of all Confederate forces in Gettysburg, clearly saw the futility of sending Pickett’s force across an almost mile long open field to attack the center of the Union line on elevated ground. His words have been agreed to by every historian, but General Robert E. Lee wanted the charge and he was the supreme commander of the Confederate army.

Longstreet’s Emotional plea to Lee

“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.”

After the bloodbath General Lee begged his troops to forgive him. “It’s all my fault, boys,” he said. And historians think he was right. Many think this was the battle that lost the Civil War for the Confederacy.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

In my opinion, there is no formula or process that will automatically provide a perfect response when someone else attempts to reject you, or your thinking, or demean you. When caught by a surprise attack, pause in your response and remember how you want to be seen by anyone present. Most importantly, do not react impulsively, stay calm, and project the personality you wish to display for yourself. I like my PISA identity. I will always bring it to mind when challenged. You can define your own desired personality and should. Be prepared for disagreements and conflict in life. But remember who you are and want to be.

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While talking with my son-in-law yesterday, he came up with the idea of how much can you really help someone else. He has close family ties with his own family and has four children he is devoted to. His question implies how much he wants to help all of his family members and his concern that, maybe when he tries to help them, he might be able to do more. Obviously, he can’t assume responsibility for everything his family members do, but I know, looking back now, that I could have done more to help my first two children. As I continued to think about his question, I realized it was, like all good relationship questions, much more complex than it might first appear to be. That’s when I decided to make this a post subject to share my thoughts with anyone who might be asking the same question. I hope my wonderful readers will find my post useful if they ever ask themselves the same question.

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What Kind of Help I Am Talking About—with Three Caveats

I will limit “help” in this post to mean emotional support and life-coaching advice for individual family members and/or friends. These are the basic types of help my son-in-law and I usually talk about.

Let me begin by identifying three caveats - three limits we all have when we try to help our family members and friends by offering them emotional support or advice:

1. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want or accepts your help. I remember a tragic event that happened to a young male student at Rutgers while I was teaching there about ten years ago. I didn’t know him but his tragedy shocked me. He was gay and his privacy was violated when an immature male neighbor secretly took videos of his intimate relations in his room. Then, when the neighbor publicly showed these videos, the victim was mortified. Without seeking any help, the young student traveled to the George Washington Bridge and jumped off to his death. The unthinking perpetrator left Rutgers and I don’t know his fate. It was all so unnecessary. If only the victim had recognized he could receive help, and that he wasn’t alone, maybe his life would have ended differently.

2. Sometimes you cannot be totally honest if the people involved cannot handle the truth. Several years ago, I was confidentially told by a friend who was a resident doctor at New York University Hospital, that sometimes doctors have to decide whether a patient and the patient’s family should be told what the doctor believes is the best course of action for the patient. My friend told me that once he had to decide whether or not to put a dying cancer patient through surgery that would have a painful outcome, or to simply let the patient slowly die painlessly from a kidney blockage that would result in uremic poisoning. The doctor chose the second option, but he could not fully inform the patient or the patient’s family, because he believed they would not be able to handle it. The doctor then added that he couldn’t even fully inform the attending nurses because they might not understand or agree with his choice. I’m just glad I do not have to make decisions like that.

3. Don’t assume you always know what advice to offer. You just may be wrong. Stay humble. In 1999, two psychologists at the University of Michigan developed what is now called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a scientifically-based theory that essentially says you often don’t know as much as you think you do about a given subject. It is a wake-up call to remember we assume we know when we really don’t. This theory further substantiates what neuroscientists have found is wrong with our memory of people and events; we don’t remember things like a camera or a tape recorder records visual or audio input. We’ re biased observers. Our mind is programmed to constantly select, modify, and redefine what we experience to fit with our already established assumptions and expectations. Even Plato seems to have known this when he said, humility is the critical first step toward wisdom.

How Likely Are You to “Help” Some Other Person?

Looking back on my many incomplete conversations with my parents and other authorities in my life, I now realize why they were less able to influence me than they thought they were. The reason is simple. As Dale Carnegie recognized back in the 1930’s, “people crave importance.” The most common way they can gain that feeling is by the reactions of other people, to them, to their ideas and their behavior. This is especially true of people in relationships with a dominant person such as a parent or a boss. If an authoritative person in your life thinks you’re smart, it helps you to believe you are.

My father, like most men raised during the early 20^th century in America, believed that authority was earned by status, not by how the dominant person interacted with the other person. I now sadly remember my dad asking me if I’d like to sit outside at our home in Mena, Arkansas and talk while we watched the sunset. It’s now sad to remember, because I never wanted to. Back then, talking with Dad (or Mom) always meant they would do the talking and I would do the listening. If we had gone outside to talk, Dad would have brought his glass of bourbon and a glass of water to sip as he talked about his experience. Yes, I was interested. But after a time, I wanted him to ask me, just once in a while, what do you think, Dan? What’s on your mind? Once, when he and mom visited me while I was in grad school at the University of Illinois, I remember him asking me what I was studying. I was pleased he wanted to know what I was doing, but when I told him about an economics course I was having a lot of trouble with, he immediately told me what he thought about those subjects. He said those were the very courses he wished he had learned more about. I never got around to telling him how much I didn’t understand many of those subjects and felt I never would. It became about him, not about me.

Like many people I know, I wish I could go back and ask my parents many questions about their lives; questions about how they met, how they started their lives together, and so forth and so on. I’ve since learned what I’d most like to know now through my own experience. You learn what’s important by living your life. But back then, when they were alive, I didn’t see them as people struggling like I do to make ends meet or just make sense out of what’s happening.

In summary, my reflections on my past experiences with my parents and the people I’ve known and worked with have led me to believe there are two basic subjects to think about first, if you wish to influence another person in your family or in your business life. Those two subjects are interconnected and are very much dependent upon how important you make the other person (what I will now call simply the “OP”) feel. Those two subjects are access and understanding: ask…

1. Q. How good is my access to the OP’s trust level?

2. Q. Does the OP really understand what I’m talking about?

Q1: How Well Can You Access Their Trust?

Your expected level of access to another person’s trust is always important to consider before you attempt to influence them. Just because you may be in a higher status than the OP (e.g., the parent or boss of the OP) does not mean you have the OP’s complete trust and faith in you or what you might want to say. Before you consider trying to influence or help the OP, you should ask yourself; What is my current level of access to this person right now? And, be honest. Don’t let your ego mislead you.

If there is uncertainty or a problem, it’s no doubt connected to your level of “self-awareness.” In other words, if you objectively understand and can control your own emotional needs, you’re much more likely to understand what the OP feels and the degree to which the OP is open to whatever you want to suggest on a particular subject. Obviously, the OP will be more resistant to you on some subjects than others. If you believe that the OP may offer strong resistance to you, then you have to decide if it’s worth the effort to try to approach him or her on this subject, or if you might first attempt an introduction to the subject to test the water—so to speak. Never assume the OP is open to whatever you want to talk about.

The most efficient path in building trust is to make trust-building a key strategy in all your important relationships from the start. In other words, don’t wait until you see a need to offer advice to think about building trust with the OP. Make this an important goal in all of your important relationships from the beginning. The standard psychologist’s advice on how to do this can be summarized as follows:

• Consistency and Reliability: Trust is established when actions match words, such as delivering on promises, following through on commitments, and being dependable

• Transparent Communication: Leaders build trust by sharing information openly, including challenges and uncertainties, which prevents rumors and makes other people feel valued

• Approachability and Empathy: Being accessible involves being open to feedback, actively listening to concerns, and showing empathy for others’ personal lives and professional challenges.

• Empowerment and Support: Trust is built by providing necessary resources, mentorship, and opportunities for growth.

• Visibility: Regular, in-person face-time helps connect with others

Q2: What’s The Best Way to Help an OP Understand?

Clear communication is always a critical need in any attempt to offer advice to anyone. How can you know if your thoughts are understood? One way that is used is to ask the OP to repeat what he or she has heard you say in their own words. It’s always important to be a good listener too, when the OP responds.

Psychologists’ basic suggestions for clear communication can be summarized as follows:

• Verify Understanding: Ask others to agree or provide more context in your reiteration of what you thought they said.

• Active Listening: Listen with an open mind, avoid interrupting, and ask open-ended questions to understand intentions rather than just facts.

• Adapt Communication Styles: Adapt to preferred communication style and use nonverbal cues (tone, posture) intentionally to reinforce, rather than contradict, the verbal message.

• Provide Constructive Feedback: Pair identifying errors with potential solutions, rather than just criticizing.

• Foster Psychological Safety: Create an environment where others feel comfortable approaching you with questions or concerns.

Q3 What Additional Advice Should Be Considered If You Have the Dominant Status?

If you happen to be the boss talking to an employee, or a parent talking to your child, you have to be careful to avoid assuming you will always have both access to and the understanding of, your OPs. You cannot expect your lower-status OPs will be able or willing to ask for more verification of your desire or ability to help them. In fact, your elevated authority might be intimidating or even threatening to them. I remember trying to politely offer my different opinion to my dad once when he was angry, and he said, “Well, maybe we just have to knock some sense into your head.” I now forgive him for his overreaction, but at the time it only served to silence me.

Advice psychologists might now offer anyone in a leadership position to maintain trust and clear communication might be the following:

• Psychological Safety: Leaders foster trust by allowing team members to voice opinions, ask questions, and take risks without fear of punishment

• Admit Mistakes: Admitting when you are wrong shows vulnerability and builds authenticity.

• “Managing Up” for Trust: This resource from the University of Minnesota emphasizes that building trust is a two-way street, involving taking responsibility for the relationship with both superiors and direct reports.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

Always think before deciding to offer help to a family member or friend. You can’t assume you have the OP’s willingness to listen and will respond as you hope they will—and this is especially important if you are in an elevated status over them. Your best chance of receiving their acceptance and understanding arises when the OPs believe you respect them and care about them. Three basic questions you should ask yourself:

1. Q. Will they accept and believe what I want to say to them?

2. Q. How honest should I be and can I be?

3. Q. Am I sure that I am giving then the help they need?

You may not have ready answers to any of these questions, but your success in winning their acceptance will depend upon the level of trust you can create for your ideas. Always be ready to learn from them as you listen to them.

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As a high school teenager, I remember standing next to the local swimming pool with friends in our swimsuits and talking about aging; one friend shocked me with his comment, “If I look like that,” pointing to an elderly man nearby, “when I get old, I’m going to kill myself.” He couldn’t imagine accepting life in an old man’s body. He saw it as embarrassing. He didn’t seem to be worried about health or how you might feel at an older age, just how you would look. Well, now that I’m 92 years old, I can talk about all of those subjects, at least as I’ve come to know them. The biggest surprise to me has been how much I had to learn. That’s why I thought what you know about old age can be an important subject at any age. You’re not going to anticipate what happens or know how to handle most of what happens to you, but you can start preparing for a “better” old age by asking the right questions now—whatever your current age is. I hope you find this useful and maybe even a bit comforting.

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When Will “Old Age” Happen to You?

This is a hard question to answer for anyone because more people are getting older due to better medical practices and medicines as well as many other improvements in the way we live. When I was a teenager in the 1940’s, I thought of age 50 as being “old”. As of 2024, the average life expectancy at birth in America has now reached the all-time high of 79, but we all know that more and more people are reaching over 100 years old and even people in their 90’s, like me, can have a decent, positive, and even productive life. It all seems to depend on how healthy your life habits are and plain, old-fashioned “good luck”. I think of myself as very lucky to be 92 because I stupidly smoked heavily for about 40 years. That was a big mistake.

Old age is very much a state of mind as well as a physical fact. Being old usually means you can’t do what you used to do—at least, not do it as easily. For a good guess about your life expectancy, doctors say you can look at other members of your family. How long did they live and what health problems did they face? My mother lived to be 70, my father 78, and my older brother 85. But I can also talk about the different medical problems each faced - that made a difference. The bottom-line answer is you don’t know when you will reach what you call “old age”. But you can assume that you will have a period of time when you’re slowing down and seeing the approach, if not the absolute certainty of, “old age”. That’s the period I’m thinking about when I talk about preparing now to meet your needs in your old age.

The First Old Person I Ever Talked to Was My Grandmother MacFarland

Most people don’t want to think about being old or to even talk to old people unless they have to. Let’s be blunt honest. I’m now ashamed to admit how little I knew about my Grandmother MacFarland. She lived in our Glen Ellyn home with us for only a few years before she died, but the only time I would see her was when she ate meals with us. She and my mother would talk but I never knew what to say to her. I was 12 years old. I now have so many questions I would love to ask her based on what little I did learn about her. As far as I can now piece together what I heard back then, her first husband, my mother’s father, was accidentally killed by falling down an elevator shaft when my mother was only four years old. Can you imagine the catastrophe that caused for both my mother and her mother? My grandmother must have married another man by the name of MacFarland; why else would we call her Grandmother MacFarland? My mother’s father was named Wyatt, I think.

I’ve never forgotten one conversation Grandmother MacFarland had with me when I was 12. She calmly told me about how all of her teeth were pulled out by a dentist. “I can remember sitting in the chair and hearing my teeth drop onto the floor, one at a time,” she said. It shocked me, but years later I learned that young women back then would sometimes have all of their teeth removed as a wedding gift, believe it or not. The idea was that teeth had many problems and to avoid those problems a women could be given a set of upper and lower dentures to eat with, as a gift. Dentists have since confirmed this bit of weird history. She was an elegant looking and acting lady but very shy. While sitting at the dinner table, for example, she would ask me to pass her the salt in such a soft voice I didn’t hear her. Then she would get angry thinking I was ignoring her and my mother would have to calm her down. I couldn’t imagine Grandmother MacFarland’s life. I only wish I could now ask her a thousand questions. How did my mother get into Jacksonville College and learn to play the piano so well? What did Mr. MacFarland do and what was he like? Sadly, I was the one who discovered she had passed away one morning. I had passed her bedroom and the door was open. I saw her lying on the bed and knew something was wrong. I ran downstairs and told my parents and they made all the arrangements to have her interred in her hometown of Jacksonville, Illinois.

When the gap in experience is that large, it’s easy to understand how I, or any young child, would have difficulty in understanding what my grandmother thought. I’ve always been glad that my father took care of Grandmother MacFarland in her final years. I don’t know what she would have otherwise done to survive. I can now imagine how lonely and uncertain her sad life must have been at the end.

What Should You Focus on Learning About Your Old Age?

Not everybody has the same experiences in old age. You may have a much different story to tell when your time comes.

In general, however, you may assume that the following question will indicate the type of things you will say about yourself after you are an “old” person:

1. You have to accept what you can’t change—just learn to live with it

2. I wish I had known earlier what I know now —I would have avoided a lot of problems. Well, maybe.

The basic truth I would suggest you think about now, when you think about your own old age phase of life, is this: remember that everything and everybody are constantly changing and evolving. Neuroscientists have often said that most people grossly underestimate the amount of change they will experience in their life. We simply assume things will be about the same five, ten, fifteen or more years from now. People forget how much change they’ve seen in the past.

In my opinion, you can help yourself by thinking of the basic practical needs you will have as you age. Keep it realistic and do some research if you really want to know more; research, I strongly recommend. I also suggest you think of your goals using the word “adequate”. In my opinion, the three most important adequacies you will need to live a positive and satisfying old age life are these:

1. Adequate Health

2. Adequate Money

3. Adequate Positive Social Opportunities

The more you learn, the more you realize what you have to learn. It’s as simple as that. What most people completely miss is how fast everything is changing—and I mean everything; what you need to know and about your health, making money, and how your social needs are shifting as your change. The smartest way you can keep up with what you need to know and do is to be disciplined about figuring out what is happening today and what you can do about it. Don’t wait for the worst to happen before you start taking responsibility for your own life—as I did when I smoked heavily for almost 40 years. I regret it now and you will regret what you didn’t think about more seriously before you got old. Start talking to yourself about what you want in life. Forget what you talk about on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram; focus instead on yourself and get serious. The more you try to do this, the easier it will get. You will be very glad you started taking care of yourself when you do. I guarantee it.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

This post is really a call to action to help you begin to help yourself. I want to help you avoid making the biggest mistake I made in my young adult life—waiting for someone else to tell me how to manage my life better. You only have to start trying to figure it out and keep doing it; make it a habit. You’ll be so glad you did, too.

The best thing I’ve learned by trying to find out what’s going on with all the changes we live with is that you will feel the pain and anxiety of reality, but you will also begin to feel you can manage your life. That’s when you begin to have more trust and respect for yourself. I think that’s the most important benefit you need to keep in mind.

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My one opportunity in Germany to get back into troop entertaining came several months later, when another G.I. who had an entertaining job there asked me to join him entertaining about 200 army personnel and their families in a giant hall in Frankfurt. We were each supposed to perform individually on a large stage in the front of this big hall. We took turns doing individual standup comedy routines. But the size of the hall, the eating, serving food racket, and loud talking made this a mission-impossible assignment for us. No one was paying attention to us. If this were my big opportunity to get an entertainment job again, I flunked it miserably. I never saw the other G.I. again.

I was only 21. My only clear goal after this fiasco was to finish my last year of service and return to college when I got home.

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My First Job Was a Clerk Typist in a Truck Repair Shop

Charles got to Germany through his private connections in the underground gay community, but he knew I didn’t fit into that crowd and told me we couldn’t hang out together in Germany. I was sad to be separated from my friend, but I later realized he was right. We parted company, and I didn’t see Charles again until 40 years later, when I looked him up in New York City.

When I landed in Germany I was given a choice of two jobs; (1) Infantry, or (2) Ordinance Corp. Other G.I.s quickly advised me—stay out of the infantry. These are the guys you want to avoid in the army. You’re out in the field all the time and you have to always watch your back. “You’ll probably have to sleep with your entrenchment tool (a foldup shovel they give you to dig foxholes) as a weapon.” After that briefing, I chose the ordinance corp. Who wouldn’t?

But what the hell does the Ordinance Corp do? Apparently, I learned, they repair and take care of vehicles, weapons, and other things. That didn’t sound so bad. Then they told me I would be sent to a truck ordinance company in Hanau, Germany. That wasn’t so bad either. Hanau was an old German town, 15 miles east of Frankfurt, a large industrial and cultural center as well as a busy port on the Main River. Frankfurt and Hanau were rail centers. In the last days of WWII, Allied bombers destroyed 70% of Frankfurt and 85% of Hanau. By 1954, the last year of American military occupation, when I served there, Frankfurt and Hanau were mostly rebuilt but still had sections of half-destroyed buildings. It’s hard to imagine the trauma that the German civilians suffered from the war until March of 1945, when both cities were occupied by American troops. In 1954, I saw families still living in half-destroyed apartment buildings, sometimes with entire walls open to public view.

My first job as a clerk typist was a surprisingly difficult typing job. Most of the time I had to type supply orders. Each truck part had an 8-digit order number, and all the orders had to be typed perfectly in 8 copies. This was before Xerox machines were invented. Thus, I had to insert carbon paper between each copy and, God forbid, I made a mistake, I had to separately correct each copy. One prior typing mistake by another clerk had accidentally ordered 60 very large air tanks, each one requiring an entire railroad flat car to move it, instead of the intended number of only six. You can imagine the resulting scene. Everyone was called down to the rail yard to view the 60 cars of tanks as the officers tried to figure out how to explain this small typing mistake. Fortunately, I had taken a typing class in high school. I wanted to type letters. I was the only boy in the class because, back in the 1940s, only girls were secretaries and no one else needed to know how to type. I’m glad I never made a typing mistake like that the 60 tanks.

My First Boss, a Sergeant, Gave Me Poor Evaluations

My boss was a sergeant who seemed like a decent type until he was replaced by another sergeant after three months, and I learned from my new boss that my former boss had given me some pretty low marks. Apparently, my first boss hated college men. He knew I had two years of college and was determined to make me look bad. But he never said a word to me about my performance. Instead, he showed me he was always keeping me under close scrutiny by riding with me whenever we drove trucks on convoy missions. He was always pointing out what I did wrong—even if it was obviously somebody else’s fault. I should have realized sooner that he did not want me to look good. My new boss quickly saw my problem and informed the Master Sergeant of my unfair evaluations. I got much better evaluations after that and was soon promoted to T.I.&E. NCO (Troop Information and Education Non-Commissioned Officer) for the entire company. I was never an NCO, however. My highest rank reached was Private First Class.

My Not So Exciting Trips Around Europe

As you might guess, my location in Hanau, Germany, gave me an opportunity to travel around Europe, and I did try to do that. But I didn’t have any friends I wanted to travel with, so I had to make my own itinerary and I simply tried whatever sounded interesting. My most memorable experiences can be summarized as follows:

Frankfurt, Germany

I visited the home of Goethe and saw Humperdink’s Hansel and Gretel opera at the Frankfurt Opera House. It was a beautiful production. From where I was sitting, I could look up and see the most beautiful girl I had seen in a long time sitting in a box seat with what appeared to be her parents. I was tempted to try to meet her but then I came to my senses. They looked like privileged class Germans and I doubt they would let her talk to a mere enlisted man in the U.S. Army. If only I spoke German, maybe I would have had an opportunity. Before coming to Germany, I had taken spoken German classes with Charles Leslie in Kansas, but I never got beyond beginner level.

On another trip to Frankfurt, however, I decided to try my very limited knowledge of German on an attractive German girl I met. I did a quick word-for-word translation to ask her if she had the correct time. My German words were correct for these English words, “Have you the time?” but what I learned, the hard way, was that my German phrase was not appropriate colloquially. That German phrase to a German girl sounded like a pick up line used in bars; it meant something like, “if you’ve the time I’ve got the money, honey!” I got my face slapped. That’s one way to learn German, of course, but not the best way. I did not impress the girl, but I learned the correct way to ask for the the time in German - “How many hours is it?” “Wie viel Uhr ist es?”

Paris, France

I went to Paris with Corporal Hayes, a guy I happened to be sharing a two-man room with in our Barracks in Hanau. He was my age but we otherwise had very little in common. We hitched a free ride on a Military Air Transport (MAT) plane to Paris and on the trip I learned something about why Hayes dropped out of the paratroopers. On the military plane, we had to wear parachutes. Hayes was upset by the chute and told me he had left the paratroops because he had lost his nerve jumping out of a plane. He added a story about a paratroop disaster at Fort Bragg, which I assume what unnerved him, but I don’t know if it was true. I could never find any record of that disaster years later. Hayes nevertheless proudly wore his paratrooper boots, which were better looking than my simple G.I. boots.

When we got to Paris, Hayes and I were surprised to find a bidet in our hotel bathroom and never figured out what it was for. These feminine cleaning devices are still not common in America. As soon as we were settled in our room, Hayes went out for an hour and returned happily telling me he had found a prostitute, his primary interest in Paris. I wanted to go to the Louvre, the world-famous art museum, but Hayes had no interest. I quickly came up with a reason for him to go there. “It’s a great place to meet girls, maybe even American girls,” I said. His eyes lit up and he immediately said he would go. The problem was I was right. When we got there, we met two American girls, and Hayes was then ready to leave. But I stayed to see what I could see and the two girls left with Hayes. We only stayed another day looking for a place to buy an American hotdog called Le Drugstore, but we never found it. I was ready to part company when Hayes, said he was going back to Hanau. I wanted to see London.

London, England

After Paris, I went to London on my own, eager to be in a country again where I could read all the signs and understand every word I heard spoken. The flight across the English Channel was really bumpy and I knew it probably was most of the time because the wells on the fold down trays of the plane were very deep.

When I got into London, I sat in the airport bar and was greeted unexpectedly by another guy my age I had gone to high school with. I can’t remember his name now, but I was happy to see him. He was an MP (Military Policeman) in Frankfurt and had an interesting story to tell me. On his patrol rounds with a companion MP one night, they decided to go into an all-black nightclub which always had a lot of black American G.I.s. It was crowded so the two MPs walked through the center of the crowded club to the other end and then turned around to walk back. But the black G.I. crowd didn’t welcome the two white M.P.s and got up to block their exit. My friend said his heart was pounding but he and his companion decided they had to show some true grit. They both took their loaded .45 caliber automatics out of their holsters and pointed them at the ceiling. Then, slowly, with their left hand, they each pulled back the top part of the weapon, called the slide, to load their weapons. This action produceda loud clicking sound that echoed throughout the nightclub. Both M.P.s waited and slowly the crowd moved back and opened up. They then walked back to the door they had come in from, and left. I could easily feel his anxiety both must have felt being totally surrounded in a very infriendly place.

My pal and I spent time together in London and met two girls. We found a club where we could buy drinks after 11:00 p.m. by paying for a membership. I took my girl to a very nice Bed & Breakfast I had found and it was a delightful evening. I never saw or wrote to my friend again. It was an unexpected pleasure to meet someone I could easily talk to again.

Dan’s Net Take-Away

In 1955, I completed my two years of service and obtained the G.I. bill benefits that paid for my remaining college credits when I got home and later, allowed me to get a V.A. mortgage to buy my first house. And, oh yes, one more good thing, I was still alive. I didn’t even have to go to Korea. My year at Fort Riley, KA was far more memorable and enjoyable than my year in the occupation forces in Germany, but I also realize I could have made more out of my time in Germany if I had worked harder at it. There are always more you can do if you try to find out more about the area you’re in—that’s true of vacations as well as time spent in the military. All things considered, I think I was very lucky. The only thing I would now do differently if I were to go back, would be to do more research about the area before going there.

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